SDNW4 Story Thread 1

[DarthShady]

New Genoa, Sector V-23
Byzantine Protectorate

Like so many places in Wild Space Nova Genoa was a shithole, although it differed from the other shitholes a bit, by being a libertarian shithole. It didn’t have much of a government to speak of, but it did accept Imperial authority by a feat of necessity. Living in wild space was dangerous and they needed protection, the Imperium was willing to grant it, albeit at a price - so the world became a Byzantine Protectorate.

It enjoyed Imperial protection in exchange for an Imperium observation post to be located on the planet. The Imperium stationed half a million PDF troops, as well as one hundred thousand Imperial Guardsmen, as well as some anti-space defences. Secretly, the Imperium knew that it was difficult to defend any Wild Space planet, and the forces stationed were at best a token. That said, the forces here was sufficient to ward off any pirates, or a small Karlack force. Of course, if the invading force were too large, the Imperium would quietly write off the planet and the troops stationed there.

Nova Genoa was something of a paradox. It was settled by colonists from Earth who yearned to be free of any government authority. Most of these fools were die hard libertarians. But yet, they somehow decided to manage to set up a rule of law, and a central authority to form and create a militia, which was trained by the local Imperial forces. Apparently, in a libertarian paradise, some form of legal redress or revenge, depending on who one talks to, must be allowed lest people simply walk up to someone with a gun and simply shoots him.

Several large cities existed on the surface of Genoa, of those the largest and most prosperous was Kalinik the planetary capitol. It held the main center of what passed as the planetary government and on its outskirts dug into the side of a mountain was the main Byzantine base on the planet. The base held a large amount of troops and the main observation post, it was a command center of sorts. The observation center received sensor information from a multitude of satellites and a single space station orbiting the planet. Due to its importance the base was heavily fortified, protected by void shields and other defences.

The planet had known very little activity in recent times, mostly local problems, nothing too serious. That suited the local commander just fine. Major General Dimitriy Volos of the Imperial Guard, supreme commander of the Imperium forces on the planet, was content with things being nice and quiet. He considered this post a retirement of sorts, certainly better than most other places he could get sent to. At least here there were no Bragulans trying to kill him, and the Karlack had not raided the planet in over a decade, so there was no danger of getting eaten either. What more could a loyal servant of the God Emperor ask? With a brisk smile on his face Dimitriy was out enjoying his morning walk. The air was fresh and it was a bit cold but he didn’t mind.

He used these morning walks to relax and plan his day, he had many duties and sometimes dealing with the locals could get tiresome. He moved through the small gardens near the base, his bodyguards in tow, stopping to examine the garden flowers from time to time. A short beep on one of the soldiers guarding the Major General interrupted his thinking. He looked at the soldier who was listening to his comm device intently.

“Problems?” He asked.

The soldier listened to his comm for a moment longer before answering. “Captain Mijic would like you to join him down in command Sir. He says its rather important.”

“Of course.” Dimitriy sighed. Its always something. “Lets go then.”

***

Imperium Command Bunker

The large metallic door screeched and clanked before opening and letting in Major General Dimitriy Volos. The man looked a bit cross, his morning walk had been interrupted after all. He stepped forward greeting the assembled naval officers and came to a stop near the main display.

“What seems to be the problem Andrej?” Dimitriy asked.

“We are having some sensor issues Sir. Strange echoes and signals on the edge of the solar system. I had suspected a malfunction but my technicians confirmed that everything is working properly.” Captain Andrej Mijic of the Imperial Navy was quick to answer. He seemed worried. “Sir...I have never seen anything like this. We’re almost blind out there.”

Hell of a way to start my day. Dimitriy thought. “Just how blind are we talking? Could it be enemy jamming?”

“If it is, I have never seen anything like it. The sensors are almost useless.” The Captain said and then tapped a few keys on a nearby console, lighting up an overview of the system on the main display. “I’m going to send out a couple of fighters to do a sweep of the system and check out some of these strange readings and sensor ghosts.” Several areas on the display turned red. “These are the most suspicious places, locations of the sensor ghosts.”

“Are we sure this is not an attack of some kind?” Dimitriy asked.

“We can’t rule out any possibilities sir.” Andrej said and sighed. “I sure hope not.”

“Alright then. I’ll place the Imperial Guard on alert and order the PDF and militia commanders to prepare themselves. If it is an attack we will be ready.” Dimitriy said and looked at Andrej. “Keep me updated on the situation.”

With that Major General Dimitriy Volos walked out of the room, his mind deep in thought, considering all the possibilities. Was this an attack? If so by who? For a moment he considered the Bragulans, but they were never known to be so subtle, and were unlikely to strike here. Too distant for them. The only two other possible culprits were The Karlack and the Collectors. And then it hit him. If those sensor problems were in fact caused by enemy jamming, it would have to be some rather advanced technology, something real powerful. Does The Swarm possess such technology? Not likely. The Collectors on the other hand...of course. It had to be them.

I should contact command, have them send some ships. He thought to himself, a sense of fear creeping up on him. He had heard stories about the collectors, about their powerful technology, and about their recent stand off with the Solarians. If it was indeed them, it could be a prelude to a full scale invasion of the Imperium. Were the machines truly capable of such things? He was becoming anxious. Calm yourself Dimitriy. The Emperor protects. Don’t make assumptions, be sure.

Sudden shouting abruptly stopped his train of thoughts. His body guards were yelling warnings at a guardsmen moving towards him from the other side of the hallway. The man had a lasgun and was pointing it at him rather menacingly.

“Stop!” One of his guards shouted.

The guardsmen gave no response and accelerated his pace. The guards were a bit confused by the man’s actions, but were well trained and saw what he intended.

“Stop or we will shoot!” Came another warning. But it was too late, the guardsmen fired his weapon, and the bodyguards responded in kind. While one of them tackled the Major General to protect him. The hallway erupted in blaze of lasgun blasts and bolter rounds. It was over in seconds. The Guardsmen assassin layed dead on the floor. Security alarms went off almost instantly. One of the General’s men was wounded and the walls had a few extra holes in them, but Dimitriy was alright. He would thank the Emperor for that later.

“What the hell just happened?” He asked, as he got up.

His bodyguards scrambled to secure the are and examine the dead assassin. The man was riddled with holes and burns, definitely dead.

“A traitor!? One of our own. I can’t believe this.” Dimitriy said. He was shocked, the Guardsmen were always loyal to the Imperium, to see one of them commit this act of treason -- it was... unthinkable.

“Sir we should get you back to the command bunker. There may be others...” One of the bodyguards said.

Escorted by his men, Dimitriy stormed into the command bunker looking rather pale. He took a seat near the main display and turned to face Andrej, who was looking rather worried and busy, but found a moment to say something.

“Are you all right sir?”

“No...I’m not. I can’t believe it. One of my own men...”

“Sir.” A voice came from behind. One of his officers approached. “Our forces are on alert and an investigation on what happened is already under way. We have confirmation, the assassin was one of our own and not an enemy agent.”

“If he was our man...then why would he do this?”

“We don’t know Sir.”

A moment of silence fell upon the room. Then something unexpected happened, alarms went off, displays turned red, and the room erupted in a flurry of activity. Reports from Imperium forces from all over the planet began pouring in, news of power outages in the cities, assassinations of military personnel, civilian attacks on the Imperial Guard and PDF troops. Everyone scrambled to sort them out and try to make sense of the situation.

“Andrej, what is happening?” Dimitriy asked.

“I don’t know Sir. We’re getting too many conflicting reports. The whole system has gone crazy.” Andrej answered as he frantically tried to make sense of the torrent of information.

“Captain we’re getting something.” One of the junior officers suddenly spoke up.

“More reports from the planet?”

“No Sir. Orbital sensors have picked up a hyper space transition at the edge of the system. We don’t know what it is. Sensors are still unreliable.”

“One of our ships?”

“No Sir. I have never seen anything like this. The readings are off the chart. This thing is... huge.”

“Let me see.” Andrej said. A second later the main display flickered to show the new contacts sensor readings. “Its definitly not one of ours.”

“More contacts.” The young officer shouted. “I’m reading multiple hyper space transitions. A dozen ships. Wait...more transitions incoming. Sir its a whole fleet.”

“God Emperor Damn It.” Andrej shouted. “We are under attack, alert all defences.”

“Sir we have a visual from the space station. Its...”

“Put it on the display!”

“Emperor...save us!”

[Mayabird]

Garden, Prime Refuge
Second Domed Bay of Rest, in Honor of the Most Noble Sacrifice
July 3400

Gone native through Stockholm Syndrome, some might say, though Praneet Supemo wouldn't have known what either of those phrases meant. Not that he would have cared for an explanation at the moment. He was too busy enjoying himself, stomping through the shallow water. Splash splash splash splash. “Come on, Chiri! At least wet your feet a bit. Get off that rock!”

Tschi-chi-olli-aw-olli-[trill] stayed on her rock, watching the little waves lap around. The two of them had become friends over the years, ever since they finally let him see who his interrogators were. Of all the humans that had been captured, in fact, he had adapted the best. “I think I'd prefer not to,” she said.

“It's called a vacation,” Praneet said. “You're supposed to have fun, amiga. You earned it! Take a break!” He was up to his waist in the water. “Didn't you ever go splash around at the beach as a chick?”

“No,” she said, still clinging to her rock.

“Me neither!” he said. “So let's make up for lost time!”

“I lived on Chrrr-tlli Station until I was recruited for Contact. We did not have open water. Then I studied and worked at Central Complex. I don't think my time was lost.” Chiri was experiencing slight agoraphobia, as she had never outside an enclosed space in her life. Technically, since the bay was domed, it was also enclosed. She tried to comfort her nerves with that thought, but it was too large and open for her to convince herself. The dome was over a kilometer high at its highest point and enclosed the entire little bay, with a complicated system of membranes where it connected with the sea for water flow and nutrient exchange. Planoforming had been greatly accelerated inside so they had a mostly-self-maintaining ecosystem and a breathable atmosphere. Supposedly, one day, all of Garden would be like this place, but a planet is a very big place and proper planoforming is a difficult, long-term job. A job that also wasn't in the highest priority.

“You got long legs now, so you can step in without getting your feathers wet. And if you don't, Chiri, I'll push you in.”

“You wouldn't!” she protested, but she extended one leg out and touched the water anyway. It was...not as cold as she was expecting. Then Chiri submerged her entire foot, and then the other. The sensation was a little odd, having both her feet under water, her claws on a gritty, slightly unstable surface, and the waves passing through and around her legs.

“Isn't it great?

“Maybe?” Even after all these years and the research, she still didn't fully understand Praneet.

He had already gotten distracted. “Hey, look! They're bringing a tank in. This one's big and orange!” It was indeed a large Modular pool, one modified for use at the bay. The large Mechanical handling it carefully eased one end into the waves and opened the slot, letting the 'cells' of the Module grouping swim out and into the water. Seeing that reminded him to look around carefully in the water for movement. “Sometimes you can see the cells swimming around,” he explained.

Chiri slowly walked a bit deeper into the water, “Wouldn't the module lose cohesion?”

“Naw. It usually swims together 'cause of the chemical electro...talking thing. But a lotta times a few pools will all get let out together so they can mingle and switch around cells and that sorta thing.” Praneet came down to the bay whenever he could make an excuse for it, and he had become very good at finding random tasks that did just that, like arranging and escorting field trips for biology students. He wore a little translator most of the time since he was physically incapable of properly speaking the language of the Avians and vocal Aggregates and they had not decided on the best way of surgically correcting that. With Chiri of course he had no problems, so he had left it on the beach.

“You know much about this place.” She pressed her claws into the sand and muck of the bottom.

“I picked up things. I hope the Planners get a job for me here.”

“Contact and the Planners would prefer if you came back to work with us.”

That made him pause a moment. “You know I'm no good at that. Everybody does, or they should. And it's been so long since I talked to another human, I don't think I could handle that.” The last time he had was three years before, when they sent him in to try to talk to another captive who had gone on a hunger strike. Praneet had to get two teeth replaced after that.

“But with us opening relations to the outside galaxy...”

“I told you everything I know already. Though if any of those catgirls ever come by – hey, look, here it comes!” He pointed at the odd ripple in the water made by hundreds of undulating Modular cells. The main body slowed and hovered a short distance away while a few feeler cells broke off to investigate. For a few seconds, they circled the legs of Chiri and Praneet, then briefly brushed against them both and returned to the main body. Satisfied, it continued on its swim.

“See?” said Praneet. “Aren't you glad you came now? Wasn't that fun?” He turned around to see Chiri hurredly wading out the water as fast as she could struggle, because the wake of the passing cells had splashed her feathers. “Well, I'm having fun.”

[Force Lord]

Command Bridge, Nova-Class Dreadnought CNS Steel Fist, 1st Fleet
Space over Faust, Faust System
Dovan Sector, The Centrality
11 August 3400

Fleet Admiral Fedorer Groven looked impassively at the space outside his transparisteel window, watching starships from all corners of civilization come to view the ESP Tournament. It was months since that assasination attempt at Rochus, and much had changed since then. However, his 1st Fleet was still unchanged in the number and the composition of its ships: it had one Nova-class dreadnought, two Disruptor-class battleships, four Dragon-class battlecruisers, eight Thesus-class cruisers, sixteen Schwartz-class destroyers and thirty-two Blitz-class frigates as its combat component. There were also one Stormfront-class Ultracarrier, two Tiger-class Supercarriers, four Thunder-class Battle Carriers, eight Gallant-class Fleet Carriers, sixteen Outpost-class Light Carriers and thirty-two Locust-class Escort Carriers. Finally, there was ten Hardshell-class yachts, a hundred Zeta-class shuttles and fifty Tetra-class hyper-light shuttles. The whole force had been moved from Foxa Sector and reassigned to cover Faust itself. Groven was expecting the 5th Fleet under Admiral Dornik Tardis to reinforce him in two days, which would double the naval force protecting Faust. In fact, both fleets combined comprised two-fifths of the Centrality's fighting naval strengh.

Groven had been told that the Chief of the Naval Staff himself, Grand Admiral Noslen Yeslah, would arrive to comand the combined force, which would be named the First Armada. Such a formation would normally be only formed in wartime or in exceptional circumstances. With Shepistan's shadow looming large over the Tournament, one could say that the formation of the First Armada was justifiable.

Today was uneventful, what with the Tournament Comittee and Supervisor Pascom making sure that everything worked smoothly down at the Complex. Groven himself had only recently saw the news about Shepistan and the Centrality engaged in shouting matches over who was the worst. He also noticed a rather huge spike in tournament-related commercials, and for the first time in his life did not see propaganda anywhere. It was clear that the Central Government wanted the citizenry to focus on the competition between ESPers, and all that it entailed. Yes, times were definitely changing.

Groven could not wait for the Tournament to start. After all, if he was assigned here, what stopped him from viewing it by hologram?

[Simon_Jester]

Privileged Frame of Reference
UNREAL TIME

On May 12, 3400, Second Fleet departed for Sector H-11, bringing with it ten heavy and twenty light line combatants along with a swarm of lesser escort units. While the original plans had called for a somewhat smaller force, Hoffman grandly proclaimed that the fleet sent out to conquer Zebes would be a "Hundred Ship Fleet," powerful enough to easily overwhelm any plausible opposition, to demonstrate Prussian superiority over the League's foes just as the Neu Lothringen and Mordor operations had done. The expedition to the Koprulu Zone was, of course, not mentioned.

Returning to the drawing board, the Staff increased the size of Second Fleet, and also expanded the attached ground contingent, after the Chancellor's insisted that it be expanded by fifty percent "to provide a fitting accompaniment for Prussia's Deep Space Fleet."

Since the available Hussar expeditionary units had already been called up, the Generalstab made up the shortfall from available Reichswehr and second-line garrison formations. The expanded ground force was greatly increased in size, and noticeably increased in strength.

The fleet was forced to proceed rather slowly through the intervening space, taking care to avoid excessive consumption of valuable fuel. As a result, the twelve-sector journey took a total of seventeen days. There was a brief but exciting interlude on May 15 when the Federal Republic of Industrial Sectors mobilized a battlegroup to keep an eye on the Prussian fleet as it made a close pass of their space, perhaps not entirely confident of the League's assurances of good intentions. Aside from this, the voyage was uneventful, with the Prussians arriving in the area of operations on May 29, just before the Colaition's official start of operations.

That was when the trouble began.

Between the large reinforcements attached to Admiral Mückenberger by Chancellor Hoffman to achieve the "hundred ship fleet," and the overly optimistic predictions about stores consumption on the part of the Staff, the Prussians' logistics situation was difficult. Several of the battleships were overdue for equipment overhauls that had been delayed so they could take part in the Neu Lothringen and Mordor operations, or the abortive expedition toward the Koprulu Sector. This meant increased consumption of fuel and spare parts by the fleet. A failure to plan for wastage of supplies for the ground combat contingent, particularly of food, also increased consumption beyond the levels expected.

It was soon realized that the logistics for the expedition was inadequate. The Prussian fleet had reached a cap on the number of units its supply line could support, making additional supply depots required.

These depot facilities would store up a large stockpile of necessities while the bulk of Second Fleet remained inactive in Sector H-11, allowing a short burst of combat operations after a few weeks' buildup.

Meanwhile, the news of an impending Prussian attack had already reached the Zebesians via Boskone. After skirmishing between Coalition and pirate forces on June 7, the Prussians began making their preparations for an attack on Zebes. But a problem arose at this time. Because of the errors in supply ship deployment, a grave shortage of fuel and daily necessities affected the Second Fleet.

Too much of the regular military convoy train out to Sector H-11 was filled with essential spares and provisions, which delayed resupply of materiel not necessary for day to day operations- but critical if Mückenberger was to lead his fleet into combat. The offensive had already been delayed to June 25, and meeting even this schedule now required vast deliveries of new supplies, especially antimatter fuel for the ships and food for the troops.

The military was not able to take care of the problem on its own, so a number of fast civilian ships were hired from Prussian home territory to carry additional fuel for the fleet.

This supply convoy was dispatched shortly after the Prussians arrived in H-11, escorted by a cruiser, a destroyer, and a trio of missile frigates: units that could be spared from critical battleline duties. They were still in Prussian territory when word of the skirmish at Hawk's Nest came through; the Admiralstab concluded that with one of their major forward bases destroyed, the pirates were now on the defensive. The cruiser and destroyer were thus pulled back and reattached to a formation doing customs patrol duty around Neu Lothringen...

---

SMS Cormoran
Sector M-12
June 15, 3400

The Prussian convoy had just passed RIS-patrolled space when the alarm came.

"Sir! Geier is signalling us!"

Korvettenkapitän Willi Becker acknowledged, and checked the plot as the convoy's point ship relayed the sensor contacts back. Four unidentified starships... six... nine... Uh-oh. Granted none of them were massive, but that was a lot of ships. Headed straight for them, not answering Geier's challenge, obvious pirates.

Immediately, his mind flicked back to the tactical manuals: "In the event of encounter with a superior force, either in tonnage or numbers, the role of the light combat unit is to picket the enemy, falling back on the battle line while alerting command to the enemy presence, so that they can be destroyed with the greatest possible speed."

So where's our battle line, you prancing, glittering, self-appointed geniuses? Even a cruiser wasn't a proper 'line' unit, and their cruiser had been peeled off a week ago.

To hell with that; it looked like they'd be reinventing doctrine on the fly here. "Signal Condor; what are your orders?" Fregattenkapitän Metzger in Condor was the senior officer of the detachment. He'd graduated from the Academy a year after Becker, gone through a string of Staff appointments and fleet exercises with high marks, and been assigned the fast track to flag rank. It would be interesting to see how he handled this...

Thirty seconds passed. A minute. They were still in hyper, not under attack yet, but that swarm of contacts was getting steadily closer...

"Repeat message to Condor: what are your orders?"

Another half minute.

Time to prod him. "Repeat message to Condor: "We say again, what are your orders? The world wonders."

Still nothing. Fuck this.

"All right. Signal the convoy ships: "Reduce speed to ten percent." Signal Geier: "Fall back on convoy at distance increment five; I will advance to cover you." Signal Condor: "Moving up to support Geier's sensor picture; request you accompany." When signals are out, I want an omnidirectional distress call. See if any warships are in range. Send additional focused signals back to Sector Command Westfalen, to Centrum, and to the nearest UN fleet bases." They were... as close to Terran space as to anyone else. It was worth a shot.

Then again, he had to plan to fight, not just to run. "Navigation, start picking spots for us to make a stand if need be." Still nothing from Condor, but the force's nominal flagship mutely complied with his 'suggestion.' Some fast-track tactical genius...

As the other two frigates formed the corners of a triangle several light-days across in sidereal space, the sensor picture cleared: nearly two dozen ships, yes, but the heaviest no better than heavy corvette tonnage, and scaling down to almost laughably small ships, plus a few that had to be converted merchantmen, with decent tonnage but drive signatures indicating very low power output.

Even so, judging by the military-grade ships alone, they were outgunned badly.

"Signal the convoy to come about to heading zero by two one zero. To Geier and Condor, form on me towards convoy's rear. Navigation, do you have a list of good drop points yet?" If the pirates weren't faster, they might be able to break for UN space. A patrol group from the Aquarius Frontier Fleet would be just what they needed right now...

Ten minutes and still no answer from Condor later, nothing beyond the routine sensor data being sent by automated systems, it was increasingly obvious that the pirates were faster than they were- on average at least. The converted merchantmen were dropping behind in the chase, and Becker suspected the frigates at least could have outrun most of the rest of the pack. But it hardly mattered, not when the civilian ships couldn't make the speed run.

Time to make that stand...

The pirates swung into action, and the results were deadly. The Prussian convoy was mauled, though it gave the pirates a good fight: an eight of the pirate force was put out of action and the rest with varying amounts of damage, but the convoy suffered heavy losses in freighters and transports.

---

SMS Brunhild
June 16, 3400

The moment Siegfried told Konteradmiral von Musel of their orders to escort Convoy 972 Reinhard nodded. "As I predicted five weeks ago. What did I tell you, Kircheis?"

News of the convoy disaster had hit the Fleet hard. Only a handful of the cargo ships and the frigate Condor had escaped the pirate attack.

"Those poor men. I still can't believe they pulled out the heavier combatants for..."

Reinhard cut him off. "For the endless need to keep up tight customs patrols around Volksland, no, Neu Lothringen? The system sits right next to one of the quadrant's main trading routes; they need all the hulls they can get to keep out contraband. Such an inconvenient commitment for the fleet, but what can you do? We have annexed the system, and now we must stop the locals from getting the tools to express their resentment for being bombed and gassed in the tens of millions."

"If only we hadn't..."

"I know, Kircheis, I know. It is one reason this has to stop, before we blunder into something we cannot recover from."

Siegfried's slumped shoulders rose slightly. "I know."

"Good. Now, what are the exact terms of our orders?"

"Sixth Battlecruisers is to accompany the replacement convoy, which will make the run at the fleet train ships' best speed; a dedicated light tanker is being dispatched for no other reason than to keep us refueled en route."

"Good, then they have started to see sense. What are we to do when we get there?"

"The phrasing is "act in support of the Second Fleet." It seems..."

Reinhard's fist clenched. "They want to put me under the command of von Mückenberger?"

"Actually... the orders are ambiguous. We are to "act in support of," but there is nothing here officially stated about the chain of command. He is of course the senior officer in theater."

"Yes."

"Hmm... the Staff says that they will issue von Mückenberger orders to detach a destroyer and frigate squadrons to provide us with organic screening elements in-theater."

"That could be used to tie us to the apron strings of his fleet. I don't like it, Kircheis. I had been hoping for independent command, even knowing how rare that is."

"Still, though, you are not formally integrated into his chain of command by your orders. Perhaps just an oversight, but it does allow you considerably more freedom of action than his own cruiser squadrons enjoy as to how you "act in support" of the fleet..."

The corner of Reinhard's mouth twitched. "Always one for the bright side. But this time I think you will be proven right. Now come with me to Operations. We have plans to make..."

[Akhlut]

Presented in Goddamn Unreal Time Circa 2 Months Ago
Hweyixal, Colonial World

Protests had paralyzed Matstegi. Hundreds of thousands of kipaktli clogged the city streets: veterans or children of veterans waving powered makwahwli above their heads while chanting “Union or liberty!” Even large portions of the police and some active military had joined the protests. Governor Biahwi overlooked all these protestors through security cameras (those that hadn't been smashed) around the city.

“The Eealtepekali better send me some troops to quell this soon. The city's stopped, and I can guarantee this is going to spread quick.”

A large predatory steppe bird squawked loudly.



“Quiet, Absaroka,” Biahwi said, throwing a hunk of meat at the bird. Absaroka quickly gulped down the meat and then stalked around the room. She was nearly as tall as Biahwi, but much less massive. He always calmed his nerves, but now even her presence wasn't working.

Another irritated squawk. Biahwi grumbled and opened up a chiller next to his desk. He plucked out a small, dead koymet. He bit off a hindleg and gulped it down, hoping a small snack would ease his stomach at least, and then tossed the rest at the bird.

He pressed down on the com-button to the riot police.

“This is Governor Biahwi, please respond.”

“Governor, this is Akato-Axkauti Basinu. I am currently the highest ranking Axkauti here, sir.”

“What? How is that?”

“Everyone higher than me has joined the HweyToTlatOl, sir. I'm doing the best I can, but the best I can tell is that 60-70% of the riot police have deserted. I've been in contact with the local militia, and they're reporting similar losses. We're outgunned, governor.”

Biahwi snarled. Absaroka lowered her head and hissed in warning, defending her food.

“Shut up, you dumb bird!” he roared.

She hissed more.

“Sir?”

“My pet. Nevermind. Retreat to the Governor's Palace and set up a perimeter. Let them roam for now until Tlali can do something for us.”

“As you will, Governor.”

Absaroka quickly gulped down what remained of her meal and licked at the blood on her beak.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Hyperspace Near Faust, Faust System
Dovan Sector, The Centrality
11 August 3400

The communications officer on board the TSS Copeia pressed a comms frequency into his console and picked up the receiver.

"This is the TSS Copeia escorting elements of Gamma Fleet in escort of Naval Intelligence Psionicists and Support Personnel to assist in patrol and security operations to Faust System Traffic Control. Requesting permission to jump from hyperspace and rendezvous with local security and intelligence services"

*static*

"This is Faust System Traffic control to TSS Copeia, we have confirmation from your government, you are cleared to exit hyperspace."

"Copy that Traffic Control, we will be exiting hyperspace, ETA five minutes"

...

A little Agalychnis class Gunboat skittered through space toward an incoming freighter, its weapons were all hot and ready to go on a second's notice as the pilot spoke into his headset

"This is Captain Litoria out of the TSS Limnodynastes to Freighter Vessel Marshal's Pride. You are ordered to halt forward velocity and transmit your ship schematics, cargo, and passenger manifests to cross reference against a detailed scan. Please power down all jamming devices and anti-psionic devices, these will be detected and the consequences of non-compliance will be most unpleasant. If your ship has the later you will be boarded and the devices dismantled and confiscated"

Litoria was, in addition to a T9 Telepath, an S12 rated metasensory, or Scanner. Most high level Scanners who joined Naval Intelligence and used as field agents were checked out--and highly skilled--on all the latest fighters and small craft for doing this exact kind of work. Captain Litoria was no exception. As his ship scanned for contraband he worked to detect anything the Scanners may miss.

...
OOC: The ball is now in the court of whoever wants to play

[Shroom Man 777]

The lights on Frederick's housing blinked rapidly, indicating he was in deep thought. "General; I have thought this over, and using backdated footage from our SIS surveillance teams who have each embassy in Montgomery under surveilance, I have identified what I believe to be the source of the infestation."


SURVPHOTO #21315AF

"This crate was delivered to the Centralist Embassy approximately 2.12 hours before the Centrality claimed that we were expelling them. At the time, we noted some interference in local Blitzschlag fields; but the technicians on duty put it down to the Centrality trying out some anti-blitzschlag field equipment at the time."

"My god," replied Tarsus. "It's all coming together now. The goddamn craboid sealed itself up in that crate, along with a protective null-field generator to keep itself from going insane during the trip across Shepistan...and it got into the Centrality embassy by posing as a persecuted psyker who wanted asylum in the Centrality."

"Excellent deduction, Admiral. It correlates with my extrapolated graphs to a 99.98 per-cent certainity. Once it was in the zero-Blitzschlag field zone around the Embassy, it quickly took over the minds of all the Centrality Embassy personnel," finished Frederick.

"God-damn fools," muttered Sheppard. "We keep telling the god-damn galaxy how dangerous an Amplitur is. But they keep poo pooing us and saying that they could counter any such esper threat with their own espers. Well, you stupid fucks, you just got mindfucked. How long did it take this time, Frederick?"

"According to my calculations and readings from nearby sensors, it took approximately 34 seconds; which is 6.5 seconds longer than the baseline Shepistani resistance to esper of cattacks of such magnitude."

"They're gonna try something soon," stated Sheppard. "Why would they leave safety to blow up those Dominion vessels and send an agent into Shepistan unless they were planning something big?"

Pausing for breath, Sheppard continued. "The Springer Mountain was a test of either their refurbished Choir Vessels or a newly built one; and the Centrality Embassy's crucial to their plan."

"They know that they can't beat us in a full on slapfight. They did that four centuries ago, and we nova-bombed them to the stone age. And we've only gotten more powerful since then."

"However, we didn't face any external threats other than the Amplitur during that period, so we were able to focus our full might on them. Hence why they want to provoke something between us and the Centrality. So the embassy had to be taken over."

Sheppard paused again.

"...shit. If we do nothing about the embassy, we leave an Amplitur cell in place in fucking Montgomery, but if we cleanse it; we risk intergalactic backlash. Shitty choice all around. But that's why I'm the god-damn president."

"Tarsus, mobilize the fleet under ESPERCON TWO. Winter, get your ENCLAVE boys ready to storm that embassy. I'll send a fully bragcrypted message to Lord Fairfax concerning this. He won't like it a damn bit."

Centrality Embassy, Montgomery
Shepistan

Inside the meat locker of the Centrality Embassy kitchen was a box. A Pandora's box, named so not because it came from a garden moon with blue people on it, but because within that box was an evil unknowable to man. The cryonic casing defrosted, and as the internal temperature began to rise from its previously subzero levels, the beast within the box stirred.

The Amplitur creature woke from its slumber, and though separated from the hivemind due to the thrice-damned Blitzschlag Fields - which to their kind was known as the Bitchslag Fields - it was still steadfast in its single-minded determination to complete its mission: the fulfillment of the cycle of revengeance unto the softskinned humans. For before its arrival in Shepistan, when it had been amongst its people, it had been steeped in the hivemind's collective hatred of the softskins and the suffering the mammalians had inflicted upon them. The pain of one lone being such as itself was but nothing in comparison to the sheer agony experienced by their entire species as a whole, and the telepathic anguish they felt with each and every death whenever their stone-age brethren were vaporized by the Shepistani/Dominion retribution patrols was incomprehensible. For centuries they experienced this, year after year after year they listened to the telepathic death-screams as their brethren were boiled away in poor begotten worlds across the dark spaces, unable to shut themselves from the cries, and unable to do anything about it. Even in death, the echoes of their screams lingered on. Listening silently, helplessly, unable to do anything, it was enough to drive anyone mad.

That was what they all heard and felt, permeated by the intrinsic communal collective consciousness shared by their entire species. The suffering led to fear, and then to anger, and finally hatred. Today, the culmination of an entire species' hate would finish the vicious cycle and once more lead to suffering - but this time, not of the Ampliturs'. This time, the suffering would be man's.

The plan was simple yet elegant, hatched by multiple minds working in concert, as in any hivemind. One would sacrifice itself to get within Shepistani territory, to nestle in one of their most vulnerable spots - the soft underbelly of their society's carapace. The zero-Blitzschlag field zone around the Embassy. The Amplitur would do what it did best there, sap and impurify the precious mentallic fluids of the humans. But no, that was not the only thing they relied on. The single most crucial thing to their plan was the Shepistanis themselves. Their paranoid security measures, once heightened by any remotely related act, say the vaporization of a Dominionoid vessel, would detect the Amplitur intrusion - for such was their effectiveness, an effectiveness only matched by the ruthlessness of their inevitable response. The Shepistanis' own nature would be their own undoing. The Amplitur would make them strike at their own human brethren, and humanity's disgustingly selfish fractious nature would do the rest.

The Amplitur steepled its pincers and smiled an Ampliturian grin with its mandibles. Then it squinted its compound eyes as it began to concentrate its considerably powerful psykeristic prowess. Suddenly, the temperature began to drop once more, reaching sub-zero whilst psychic frost formed on the walls of the embassy kitchen. The interior of the Amplitur's refrigerator box began to glow eerie blue.

The plan was to question the Shepistanis of their intentions. If there was no response, or if the Shepistanis wanted to occupy the building, the Black Berets would wait until the Shepistanis fired their first shot. Then they would open fire in response. The event would be recorded and transmitted by the strongest signal the station's emitters could manage, and broadcast it until the emitters were destroyed or overwhelmed by jammers.

The Black Berets could now see the Shepistani rotor-craft deploy elite troops and surround the area. They waited for their next move.

"Remember, let the Shepistanis fire the first shot! We will not be the agressors!", shouted again the BB commander through his comlink.

Suddenly a loud voice was heard: someone had gone to the megaphone.

"Shepistani troops, what are your intentions here? We are waiting for a ship that will take us home, so let us leave in peace. If you intend to attack us, know that you are doing a great mistake. So let us leave, and you will be free to look for whatever you intend to find."

For several agonizing seconds, there was only silence.

Centrality Embassy, Montgomery
Shepistan

There was a flash of light, like that of lightning, and then the silence was gone. There was noise, the sound of distant thunder. The unmistakable crack of gunfire. Muzzle flashes from the Shepistani vertibirds, and the sound of gunshots following after the supersonic bullets. The whizzing of bullets zipping past the Black Berets. The hisses of very narrow misses.

"SPECIAL ORDER 937 IS IN EFFECT!" shouted the Shepistani ENCLAVE trooper through the radio. "SPECIAL ORDER 937 IS IN -"

His voice was drowned out in a sudden outburst of static that coincided with the gunfire.

The Black Berets dived for cover along with the spokesman who had tried to communicate with the Shepistanis by megaphone.

"CEASE FIRE! PLEASE!" the Centralite spokesman shouted desperately. "PLEASE! CEASE -"

The megaphone emitted a painful metallic shriek that rendered his voice inaudible, like the sound a microphone makes when it's placed in front of a speaker. Like feedback.

"Shit!" a Beret shouted. "We're being jammed! Our radios aren't working!"

He was right.

"By who?!"

"By the Shepistanis, of course, you numbnuts!"

He was wrong.

"Fuck! What do we do now?"

"Those motherfuckers fired first, goddamn it! They fired first! They're the aggressors!"

The Shepistani vertibirds approached them now. Strobe lights beamed from their fuselages, blinding the Berets until their nightvision goggles compensated. They could see and hear the Shepistanis continue their relentless attack, they were coming in with all guns blazing.



"They're coming in for a strafing run! Take cover, make stand!"

"Return fire, goddamn it!" another Beret shouted. "They fired the first shot! And the second and the third!"

"But we haven't gotten orders from the commander yet! The radios aren't working! Nothing is!"

Then they all heard the unmistakable voice of their commander somehow getting through the jamming.

"WASTE THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS!"

[MKSheppard]

The Lucky 70 Casino: Montgomery, Shepistan

Thara Krace watched the craps game with a grin on her face.

Since arriving at the Casino last night on temporary leave from Los Shepvada; she'd cranked up a couple thousand in winnings, and was about to get more...if her luck held.

Turning around, she punched Lee "FAPOLLO" Shroomdama on the shoulder. Lee had reluctantly agreed to go on this 'date' with Krace, out of no other reason than the possibility of getting into her pants.

"Damn it Lee, I need some extra luck," she muttered, shaking the pair of dice in her hand to emphasize her point.

"Whatever," replied Lee as he put down the bottle of SHEP DANIELS he'd been nursing for the last couple of hours.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to blow on the dice for luck, but instead spat a loogie onto them.

"Godsdamnit Lee!" shouted Krace right before she punched him out.

"Fuck. Might as well see what happens..." she muttered as she threw the phgelm-encrusted dice onto the craps table.

It was at that moment the emergency beeper on her waist began to beep.

"Godsdamit."

Officially, she was still on call in case anything happened that required her skills in black bag douchery. But she had really wanted to gamble.

So she had solved the problem in imitable STARFUCK style by parking her Viper in the casino's parking lot.

Rushing out of the casino, she shoved the chips from her winnings into the many innumerable pockets and pouches on her flight suit, which she had wore beneath the fancy dress that was required in the casino.

As she climbed up the Viper's pilot's boarding ladder, she ignored the low wails of the car alarms in the Ferrarios, Shroomvees, and Shroombinginis that she'd crushed beneath her landing gear when she'd arrived.

Running through her checklist in seconds, the Viper's engines roared to life and with a chortle of glee, she took off into the sky, the super-hot exhaust of her engines in full VTOLOL afterburn reducing the vehicles around her to husks of carbonized steel frames.

"If you didn't want that, you shouldn't have parked in VIPER ONLY PARKING!" she shrieked to nobody in particular. It was a standing joke amongst Viper pilots that every parking lot in Shepistan was actually VIPER ONLY PARKING, and they took every chance to prove that in their eternal war with the BOMBER BARONS who controlled Shepistani military procurement.

As she passed 145,000 feet; she went into full HTOLOL afterburn and quickly went past the hypersonic barrier into the shroomsonic barrier. Looking down at her central MFD, she saw that there was a situation in central Montgomery near the Centrality Embassy...involving Special Order 937?

STARFUCK had to do a double take on that. Special Order 937 in Shepistan was quite blunt and was invoked only when a possible Amplitur threat existed. To refresh her memory over what it all meant, she had her flight computer load S.O. 937 up to review during the short flight.

SPECIAL ORDER 937.

POSSIBLE AMPLITUR INFESTATION.

INVESTIGATE AND TAKE ALL MEASURES NECESSARY TO ERADICATE.

PRIORITY ONE.

ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS SECONDARY.

ALL SHEPISTANI AND NON SHEPISTANI PERSONNEL EXPENDABLE.

Starfuck took several poker chips out of one of her pockets and began to chew on them in a reflexive reaction.

Spitting bloody plastic shards out of her mouth, STARFUCK laughed.

She fucking laughed.

"Take that you candy ass FAPOLLO! I'm about to be able to kill anyone I want to, with no answers! I'll beat your fucking high score!"

Like a meteor bent on destruction, STARFUCK tore a actinic streak across the sky of Shepistan.

ENCLAVE Assault Team; Gates of the Centrality Embassy

Sergeant Limestone ran through the equipment of his team as they crouched behind the brick wall that encircled the Embassy grounds, making one last check.

"Right, everyone's OK. Let's do this!"

They advanced in a half-crouch with weapons at the ready. Soon, the guardhouse came into sight. Over their heads thundered scores of vertibirds, the propwash of their engines causing the vegetation on the Embassy grounds to sway.

Someone dressed in what appeared to be a typical light armor suit for the Centrality stepped forward with a megaphone.

From the man's dark skin tone, it could only be one of the notorious Black Berets of the Centrality.

"Shepistani troops, what are your intentions here? We are waiting for a ship that will take us home, so let us leave in peace. If you intend to attack us, know that you are doing a great mistake. So let us leave, and you will be free to look for whatever you intend to find."

Limestone wasted no time in replying.

"SPECIAL ORDER 937 IS IN EFFECT! SPECIAL ORDER 937 IS IN--"

At that moment; the Black Berets opened fire; causing everyone to scatter as energy bolts filled the area.

"GOD DAMN IT! CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE!" roared Limestone at the top of his lungs.

At that moment, the commlink in Limestone's helmet issued a screech of static and then went silent. He tapped the side of his helmet several times, but it didn't fix the balky commlink.

Then they heard it. The distinctive screech-howl of their PKE meters going off the scale.



Suddenly, the commlinks in everyone's helmets cleared up and they heard the voice of their superior officer, Colonel Winter.

"WASTE THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS!"

"Shit!" yelled Limestone. "Consider all communications compromised by the Amplitur threat! Go full retard! Assume all personnel in the Embassy mindwiped by the Amplitur!"

Drawing their Proton-Plasma guns, the ENCLAVE troopers began to advance across the grounds of the Embassy, towards the central building.



The Black Berets at the gatehouse put up a valiant fight; but quickly were overwhelmed by the torrents of proton-plasma fire that were being poured out by the ENCLAVE troopers; and they collapsed to the dirt with massive holes in their bodies.

Overhead, the Shepistani ENCLAVE vertibirds wheeled around, firing on anyone they found who was not Shepistani. Scores of defenders disappeared under proton-plasma and chaingun fire.

Suddenly a bright spear of light lanced out from one of the windows of the embassy, catching a vertibird in mid-flight. It exploded and fell to the ground in a flaming mass.

Centrality Embassy, Meat Locker



The Amplitur clacked it's claws in amusement as it mentally 'read' the battle occuring outside. All was transpiring as it had foreseen.

But this was a mere incident. It was not yet a Galactic incident. Squeezing the multitude of eyes it had shut, it concentrated.

On the filthy humanoids that were on board the C-510F transport idling it's engines at the back of the embassy grounds. The Amplitur knew from reading their minds that they were the females and larva of the Centrality's embassy.

It was larva's play to implant an overwhelming image in the minds of all those on the transport. Images of the Shepistanis lining up prisoners on the Embassy grounds and executing them.



As plankton on the meal, the Amplitur also added a group of Shepistani soldiers advancing towards the transport with their weapons drawn.

Grounds of the Centrality Embassy

Sergeant Limestone ducked a bolt and rolled into a convient bomb crater left behind by a SHROOMDRA rocket fired by one of the orbiting vertibirds.

Raising his rifle, he blew the head off a Centrality security man firing on him. Checking his platoon readouts, he saw that about a quarter of them were already down, despite their heavy armor, the best that Shepistan could provide.

Suddenly the earth began to shake. Looking up, he saw a huge transport taking off from the rear of the embassy grounds. It quickly gained altitude and rocketed off, quickly opening the range between it and the relatively short-ranged weapons on the vertibirds.

Out of reflex and long training, Limestone activated his commlink; because even though they might be Amplitur infested; procedure was to be followed.

"Godsdamnit, this is Element BASALT...we have breach of the containment zone! Contain the breach! Contain the breach!"

If a god-damn Amplitur is on that transport, we're all fucked.

A voice suddenly broke in, one he didn't recognize.

"Don't sweat it, Element Basalt; I'm on it."

Moments later a Viper tore through the space over the embassy, dodged a stray surface-to-air energy bolt, and then did a full power vertical climb towards the fleeing transport.

STARFUCK watched as the sky rapidly turned dark blue and then deep black as the altitude increased and the transport grew larger before her.

A panicked voice crackled over the radio.

"Don't shoot! We've got women and children on board! Don't shoot for the love of god! We're carrying the Embassy staff's families to safety from you monsters!"

STARFUCK was having none of it.

"Shut your pie hole! Turn around and land immediately at the spot you took off from or you will be DESTROYED under Order 937!"

In response, she saw the engines of the transport brighten. At that she giggled and then began to speak for the record.

"Transport is refusing to comply with Order 937; this indicates it has Amplitur aboard. Implementing lethal sanction to prevent Amplitur escape."

On her HUD, the transport was suddenly covered in boxes, diamonds, pentagons, hexagons, and pentagrams as the Viper's targeting system locked onto everything that could be hit.

With a jerk, she triggered the four JDAMRAAMLRSLBM9F under the wings of her Viper. They leapt off their launch rails and MIRVed split seconds before they slammed into the vunerable points on the transport.

"You bastards! We have women and children aboar..." came a shout from the transport which was cut off by a high pitched whistle.

Sixty miles high, the transport began to break up, spilling hundreds of people into the cold vacuum of near-space; their last breaths exploding from their lungs in crystallized spray.

STARFUCK giggled again as she watched the Viper's computers calculate the number of objects that were classified as Bodies, Humanoid within it's field of view.

"Take that FAPOLLO!" she shouted as the count climbed past 287. "I BEAT YOUR FUCKING SCORE!"

The Centrality Embassy, Meat Locker

Booms and thuds were reverberating through the halls of the embassy as the Shepistanis reached it and began to storm it. Screams quickly filled the hallways, only to be cut off by the whine of proton-plasma rifles.



My mission here is complete. thought the Amplitur. Focusing it's intense psykeric energies, it began to melt a hole through the Meat Locker's floor and into the sewer line that ran under this portion of the Embassy. Within moments, the escape route was finished.

Taking one last psychic 'read' of the area around it; it shuddered at the horrible enamanations of the Bitchslag fields on the power armor of the Shepistani troops.

With a clack of it's claws, it activicated the null-field on it's back, which would protect it from those thrice-damned Bitchslag fields as long as it's power supply lasted; which was 24 humanoid hours.

Giggling evilly in it's foul mental tongue, the Amplitur scrabbled out of it's container and into the sewer line.

Minutes later, the door to the meat locker exploded inwards, and Sergeant Limestone crashed through; his PKE meter at the ready.

Psykeric energies were high in the room, but decaying, indicating that the Amplitur had recently left.

It was then he saw the hole in the floor.

"We have a goddamn breach!" he shouted for the second time that day.

Reacting instinctively, he pulled a sub-nuclear grenade from its attachment point on his armor, armed it and rolled it into the hole.

Minutes later, with the last of the Shepistani troops retrating beyond the minimum safe distance, the embassy exploded.

[Force Lord]

Command Bridge, Disruptor-class Battleship CNS Black Hole
Deep Space, Sector H-11
17 June 3400

"Vice-Admiral Prots Verio on deck!", Rear-Admiral Fibors shouted.

At this, everyone in the bridge stood at attention. The Vice-Admiral himself walked calmly between the crew, observing them. He stopped in front of Fibors, who saluted. Verio saluted as well, and said, "At ease, all of you." Then, turning to the bridge crew, said, "Return to work!" At this, the crew retuned to their tasks.

Verio turned again to Fibors. "So what is it, Rear-Admiral? Why is this force still idle?"

Fibors explained, "Sir, we are still waiting for the Prussians to get their act together. Their logistics situation is not good, frankly, and with the recent pirate attacks on Coalition and neutral shipping, it won't get better for days. The offensive against Zebes was already delayed for June 25 because of this."

"What possesed the Prussians to send a fleet they can't properly supply? Don't they use maps?", Verio stated.

"I think they were too optimistic about the needs of their fleet. Must be a German characteristic," Fibors responded.

Verio grumbled, "Heh. German "efficiency". More like arrogance."

Fibors nodded. "So I guess we have to wait."

[Force Lord]

General Secretary's Office, Central Party HQ, Central City
Centrum, The Center Sector, The Centrality
5 August 3400

"Wait, Shepistan just attacked our embassy?!", Viso Fredon screamed.

"There's no denying it, my friend. We recieved a distress call from our embassy. While all the important diplomats had left before, there was still embassy staff and a Black Beret force guarding them. I can only assume 100% fatalities," Hoover Gates responded.

Borlon declared, "Shepistan has given us a clear casus belli. We should make an appropiate response to Shepistan."

Tredell said, "The Sheppoes have made a great blunder in charging at the embassy with all guns blazing. This calls for immediate movilization!"

Suddenly, Cracus Vompey stormed in.

"I overheard someone saying mobilization. I was hoping you'd say that," he said.

"Then you know what to do, my friend," said Fredon, "Alert the military that general mobilization will be started. All leave will be suspended and the planned downsizing of the Ground Forces will be stopped for the duration of this emergency. All ESPers not connected to the Tournament will be called up. The rest is up to you."

"Yes, General Secretary. Long live the State!", Vompey saluted, and walked out of the office.

"It seems I have a lot of work to do. I'll tell Nostrum to ready a diplomatic offensive. I will go and help him," Borlon stated, and he too left the room.

Tredell looked at Fredon. He was pensive. "Know what? Let me handle the rabble-rousing discourse this time, old friend. It seems you're going to be busy enough," Tredell said.

"Don't remind me. Thanks anyway. Make sure the people are fired up. I fear this crisis will last longer than expected."

Tredell nodded, and left the room.

Fredon was about to leave himself when he saw Kierger walk in.

"Vompey told me what happened," said Kierger. "Will there be war?"

"I hope not," responded Fredon. "But if Shepistan crosses the line again, they will have one."

[Force Lord]

The Central Times

SHEPISTAN MASSACRES EMBASSY PERSONELL!

By the Editor

It is a grim day for the Centrality. Shepistani troops, ignoring pleas from our embassy in their country, killed all of the staff and even destroyed the embassy itself! This unprovoked and dastardly attack on our citizens has led for cries for revenge in the Central State.

Already, the Triumvirate that rules this nation in the Dictator's stead has decreed general mobilization of all military personell from all services. War clouds are gathering.

In a stirring speach today, Secretary of State and Triumvir Falko Tredell demanded that Shepistan pay reparations to the families of the dead embassy staff. He warned Shepistan that any other hostile action against the Centrality will result in war.

"Shepistan has sown the wind, and if they continue to do so they shall reap the whirlwind!", he declared.

It is unknown what effects this will have on the 1100th ESPer Tournament. Tournament officials were not available for comment.

Will there be war with Shepistan? Only the future knows.

Long live the Centrality!

[MKSheppard]

Vulture Rock Command Bunker
Shepistani Federation



General Sheppard stared into the holocams with a stern look on his face, and the seal of the Shepistani Republic behind him, offset with a bright crimson curtain.

He hated doing these speeches; he'd never been one for formal speeches, but he had to give one now; due to the huge mess that had occured with the goddamn Centralians.

The red lights on the holocams blinked on.

Taking a deep breath, he began to speak.

"People of the Shepistani Republic, I bring grave news. We face the greatest Amplitur threat in centuries."

All across the Republic, countless billions of throats sucked in breath at that world.

Slowly, Sheppard began to lay out the evidence as Frederick had given him a day before; added with the new information that had been uncovered following the siege of the Centrality Embassy.

*snip 20 minutes*

"...it was with a heavy heart that I ordered the Embassy to be cleansed of the possible Amplitur infestation."

"Our troops were fired upon first by Centrality personnel who were under the influence of the Amplitur in the zero-field region of the Embassy."

"PKE readings taken at that time by our troops conclusively show that an Amplitur was present; so we were left with no other choice but to treat them as all mindwiped husks with no other free will left to them. Even if we had used less-than-lethals on them, they would have died once removed from the Amplitur's mental control, as it would have replaced their minds with fragments of it's own."

"Surveillance footage we recovered from the Server cloud of the Centrality embassy clearly show the craboid form of an Amplitur; as shown here..."

"Unfortunately, due to a breach of the cordon by the Amplitur itself..."

*show footage of craboid melting hole and then scuttling into it*

"...we had no other choice but to destroy the embassy in an attempt to kill the Amplitur before it could make good on it's escape. We do not yet know if it succeeded, but we must assume it did so."

"Therefore as accorded to me under the Presidental Wartime Powers Act; I am ordering the following..."

"...All Blitzschlag field generators are to be immediately inspected and augmented by portable emergency generators."

"...that anti-crab measures be implemented by the Shepistani Department of the Interior to prevent the Amplitur from hiding amongst our natural crab population."

"...importation of foreign crabs are banned effective immediately."

"...that all foreign embassies immediately implement local Blitzschlag fields to prevent a reoccurence of this tragic incident. The Bragulan government has been most helpful in this aspect."

Sheppard shuffled some more papers and then sighed.

"It has come to my attention that the Centrality has demanded reparitations regarding this incident."

"We will be sending the amount deemed appropriate to them, minus deductions for the cost of cleansing the infestation and of course for the life insurance payouts for the brave Shepistani soldiers who gave their lives so that we could live free of insidious psykerism."

"The final amount that will be sent to the Centrality is approximately $99,000 Shepistani Dollars."

"I am sure the Centrality will complain about this amount. To them I say:"

"Tough Luck. The responsibility for this horrible psyker incident rests solely upon your shoulders in many ways; from your lax attitude towards transshipment of possible psyker vectors, and to your disproval of common-sense measures against the threat."

Sheppard paused at that and looked right into the camera's 'eye'.

"Maybe now you will recognize the rampant threat that psykerism poses to the cerebrospinal fluids of all sentinent beings in the galaxy."

A haunted look then appeared in Sheppard's eyes.

"...God knows we know this all too well."

"Till then, I remain your President. Good night, and and Atom Bless Shepistan!"

//TERMINATE MAINLINE TRANSMISSION//

Sheppard sighed and adjusted his collar. It was damned tight in formal mode. He turned and looked at Colonel Winter.

"You know, I've got legislation on my desk that outlaws the Centrality forever. We begin planetary bombardment in five minutes."

...unbeknownst to Sheppard that informal ad-lib was captured by several intelligence agencies monitoring the presidental studio's carrier signal.

[Shroom Man 777]

Bragulan Consulate, Capital Wasteland, Montgommery, Shepistan

To the Bragulans stationed at the consulate, the last few months had seen spats amongst several puny human nations. Amongst them were the desecration of a cathedral and brutalization of clergy belonging to Puny Human Nation Number 1 (the Byzantine Imperium), and now there was another diplomatic fracas between Puny Human Nation Number 2 (the Centrality), and Bragule's good friend the Shepistani Republic. In light of the latest hijinks, the Bragulan consulate located at the wilderness of the Capital Wasteland - situated under the shadow of the Vulture Rock mountain fortress-complex itself - had been most helpful in aiding the Shepistani diplomatic overtures at both soothing relations with other nations (which was a part of glasnot and bragstroika) as well as providing increasingly paranoid security measures (which was a part of... well, Bragulanity in general).

Rather than utilizing all-encompassing BFGs like the Shepistanis, the standard Bragulan paranoid security measures pertaining to preventing potential psykerist penetrations and perfusions was to link Psychokinetic Energy (PKE) meters to automated and semi-automated manned and unmanned weaponries such as the FLACIDS (Full Liquidation Active Counter Intrusion Defense Systems) and the RANCIDS (Reactive Automated Nuclear Counter Intrusion Defense Systems). Thus, while a psyker may be forced to conceal his/her/its true nature when detecting the BFGs, under the Bragulan system the absence of BFGs may lull the psyker into a false sense of security, believing it to be safe and BFG-free, and then any careless display of psykerism once detected by the omnipresent Bragulan surveillance system will automatically mark the psyker out for the RANCIDS and the FLACIDs to deal with at their own indiscretion.

"...that all foreign embassies immediately implement local Blitzschlag fields to prevent a reoccurence of this tragic incident. The Bragulan government has been most helpful in this aspect."

But with the Shepistani special request, the Bragulans gladly complied in installing a Blitzschlag Field Generator to their facility. A, as in singular.



Because, in an exercise of idle curiosity by the local IBGV agents on Montgommery, they took the single BFG, linked it to a PKE, and connected it to the Druga-3 over-the-horizon (OTH) radar powered by a radio-ionic thermonuclear generator (RTG) - thus quadruplicating the combined effectiveness of the TLAs.

By connecting the BFG to the embassy's modest-sized communications antenna (which had the secondary use of cooking any mutant geese in the local aerospace), and combining everything from BFG fields to the transmissions of vacuum tube-powered radios OTH XYZ-band radars, and the gamma ray/x-ray arrays, microwave, miniwave and macrowave and maybe even tidal wave emissions and so on and such forth, the raw power of this frankenstinian electronic warfare array expanded at a geometric rate.

The Bragulans chuckled and laughed boisterously as they began bouncing their transmissions off the electro-ionosphere, directing it over the horizon and shooting arc-beams of invisible cosmic radiation towards other peoples, places and events otherwise uncovered by the Shepistani BFG-grid. A few of the other embassies slow to comply with the Shepistani BFG implementation order were bombarded, such as the Solarian Embassy (if there was one on Montgommery), and those who did not cower in shielded bunkers but instead foolishly wandered around in the open would come to know the effect of what would, in later days, come to be known as the Bragulan Brainpecker. Those fancy shmancy posthumanoids with cybernetics, particularly in their brains, with classy and expensive branded consumer organics and iBrains and such began to experience nausea and vomiting, dizziness and disorientation, vertigo, and severely painful headaches.

A chittering-chattering woodpeckering sound filled their heads as their brain-implants began unwillingly receiving indiscriminate signals noise that would only stop when either the Bragulan super-BFG stopped transmitting or moved on to another target, or when the affected people fled away from the target zone or hid in shielded areas. This was for those who had cyber-brains. Those who didn't have cyberbrains nonetheless began suffering malfunctioning electronics, which caused no small amount of suffering for low-grade cyborgs and prosthesis-wearers. Purely meat humans, or those enhanciles with sufficiently hardened cyber-organics, could go by relatively well and unaffected. Their gadgets, such as MePhones and Tamagotchi, were not so fortunate.

Whenever the Druga-3 bombarded civilian spaces, hospitals would crowd up as people were admitted for burns from phones that melted in their hands, or perforated eardrums from exploding iProd earpieces, and the rates of motor vehicular accidents (MVAs, another TLA!) began to spike as the ECM began to jam the GPS systems of auto-cars, seemingly deliberately scrambling their coordinates and leading them to crash into each other, causing gratuitous highway, low-way, subway and freeway pileups. This was taken as a sign and portent, and the majority of Shepistanis who drove good old Frod cars chastised those who chose imported Haruhi Toyoyotas or Altacar Alta Cars for their foolishness - this was mistakenly interpreted as a factory defect, causing a massive recall on Toyoyotas and Alta Cars, causing the stocks of several foreign car companies to plummet, much to the joy of Frod Motors, PMC and the local car business in Detroid. Old people with the otherwise trusty B-36 pacemakers ended up dying en masse as their very cardiac systems were jammed!

In the end, the Shepistani Intelligence Service somehow managed to classify the Bragulan activities and their Druga-3 super-system, keeping it a secret whilst the mass mayhem they caused somehow came out to Shepistan's advantage. Quietly, the SIS began installing reflectors on several innocuous government buildings, reflectors that would deliberately redirect the Druga-3's copious emissions towards disliked things, such as flocks of birds (whose internal biological compasses would get screwed up when exposed to the invisible beams, causing them to fly into windows and die - or, sometimes, go berserk and attack people in flocks!), or oceans (causing whales to inexplicably beach themselves), and even other people's embassies.

[Mayabird]

Neu Preußen
Prussian Star League

As news rippled from one nation to another, people quickly spotted the pattern of the Refuge's representatives for first contact: the three or four nearly identical small warships escorting a yacht, which had been specially modified to represent what they believed, or at least guessed, was the essence of the nation they were visiting. This one looked...mechanical. Efficient, even. The Refuge had tried to emulate the efficiency of Prussia!
The yacht landed at the designated location, watched by many alert eyes, including those of Reichskanzler Hoffman. It was a propitious day, and he had no intentions of missing it.

Out marched the mechanoid guards. They made a path and stood at attention, watching the crowds of soldiers and diplomats. There was a breathless pause, as everyone awaited the next step.

And then, through the middle of the path, flew a very large dove. Its wings made a not-unpleasant whistling sound, perhaps sounding like 'blu-blu-blu-blu-blu,'* and he landed before Hoffman and the officials nearby. What was this?
Then the dove spoke. “I am Ambassador Cordial,” he said, “here on behalf of the Refuge. We were most honored by your invitation and come in hope and wish of establishing peaceful and productive relations between our nations.”

A dove! The ambassador himself was a symbol of peace! Finally, someone who truly understood, someone who could feel it through his very bones! After all that unpleasantness with Umeria on the Volksland issue, it was good to meet a possible kindred soul, no matter what his species was.

*The actual sound of the wing flapping is here, towards the bottom of the page. 'Blu-blu-blu-blu' is about the best I can think of to describe the sound.

[Force Lord]

...unbeknownst to Sheppard that informal ad-lib was captured by several intelligence agencies monitoring the presidental studio's carrier signal.

Central Times HQ, Aurora
Aybeem Sector, The Centrality

"I think you should see this, chief," said the secretary. In her hands was a document titled "TOP SECRET!". "A CIS agent said that it was important."

Chief Editor Ranulph Olderu grabbed the case opened it, and read its contents for half an hour. When he finished, he laughed. He fucking laughed.

"My, my, did Sheppard slip his tounge. Even if he's not serious, I bet there'll be quite a scandal if this is published. I expect an instant increase in sales, up to 100%. Did you ask the agent that what Shep said will be disseminated?"

"Well, yes, and he told me that it was likely that other nations' Intelligence must have found out," she responded.

He then pointed at the secretary. "Get the news out. We'll have Sheppard keep quiet at his bunker for a long time...."

---

The Central Times

SHEPPARD SAYS HE WILL "OUTLAW" CENTRALITY

By the Editor

It appears Sheppard has lost his head.

CIS agents, who refused to be named for security reasons, intercepted a highly inflammatory comment by General Sheppard, leader of Shepistan, coming from a carrier signal in his presidental studio.

Reportedly he said, "You know, I've got legislation on my desk that outlaws the Centrality forever. We begin planetary bombardment in five minutes."

You can see who are we dealing with, citizens of the Centrality. A destructive madman with a fetish for nukes. More than ever, we must be ready for any further hostility from Shepistan.

And he claimed that the blatant aggression against our embassy was because there was an Amplitur loose there! What a terrible excuse, since it was Shepistan who destroyed the Amplitur race as a credible entity centuries ago! Even if Sheppard was somehow telling the truth, we tell him that he should have been more measured and not act like an paranoid fool. And now he wants to outlaw us.

What will that achieve? Will Shepistan end up outlawed instead? The interstellar community may call us tyrannical, but they see that we at least are pragmatic!

[Alyrium Denryle]

Space over Faust, Faust System
Dovan Sector, The Centrality
13 August 3400
TSS Palmipes


"Commander, we are getting a lot of civilian comm traffic. The Shepistani's have anniliated the Centrality embassy on Montgomery. No survivors. They even chased women and children fleeing on a ship into orbit and vaporized them. The Shepistanis are claiming that am Amplitur infiltrated the Embassy... Getting transmission from fleet command. Reports confirmed"

"Shit."

"We are also intercepting a transmission from the Centrality government. They are mobilizing their fleet"

"More shit. We are almost directly between them. If the Shepistani's go to war they may invade us purely on principle. We have some of the strongest telepaths in Naval Intelligence here right now. Send a transmission to Command, and copy our ambassador to the Centrality. We may be able to diffuse this. It is possible an Amplitur was there, and if one of our telepaths could replicate a suite of scenarios for how this could have occurred, it may ease some tensions, and at least get them talking before they shoot at eachother. Get me a T12 from the Opacum, we have some things to run through."

"Sir"

[Steve]

Palace of Parliament Government Offices, Westminster
New Anglia, Star Kingdom of New Anglia
7 August 3400

"You know, I've got legislation on my desk that outlaws the Centrality forever. We begin planetary bombardment in five minutes."

A long sigh came from Prime Minister Penton as Sir James Bronson hit the key to turn the video off. "They never realized they were still transmitting," Bronson explained. "I imagine a number of SIGINT operations in Montgomery picked it up as well."

"Bloody maniac," Penton said with exasperation. "Lord Prestwick, the Commons have become restless on this issue. This isn't just the usual bad behavior we've had to deal with from these states." The truth was that New Anglia don't particularly care about either the Centrality nor Shepistan; a pack of tyrannical mind-readers on one end and a bunch of bloody, violent thugs on the other, both far from the Empire's frontiers. But an attack on another nation's embassy? A claimed takeover of said embassy by a devilishly powerful psionic race of human-hating insectoids? The entire situation was tricky now. "Either the Centrality ended up host to some form of surviving Amplitur life form or the Shepistanis, being the bloody-minded paranoid thugs they are, overreacted due to an error and murdered en masse the staff and dependents of a foreign embassy, violating millennia of custom and international law regarding the protections of diplomatic staff. This, of course, is not merely casus belli for the Centrality, but a breach of international law that can see every state from here to Nova Atlantis sign on for what would be a bloody and terrible strafexpedition against the Shepistanis... an act of folly if there really are Amplitur out there that would play into their hands."

There were solemn nods. At the time of the Amplitur War New Anglia had been going through the treacherous period of the Dilgrud Wars, either locked in the mortal struggle with that vicious and cruel race when it was at its height or licking wounds and trying to rebuild from the damage caused by the Dilgrud. As such they had not been able to interact with the conflict in any meaningful way though they had sympathized with the plight of the Dominion and Shepistan.

Centuries of brutish behavior, however, had turned that sympathy to disgust. The violent anti-esper fanaticism the Shepistanis especially had picked up as a consequence of the war, and the measures they had taken, turned the Shepistanis from a proud and heroic nation that had fought bitterly to save themselves, and others, from the predations of a vicious and genocidal race into cruel maniacs who stunted the minds of their own children out of an irrational hatred of all Espers. Beyond that, the decline of the Dominion into an insular and xenophobic theocracy with a basket case economy and Shepistan's slide into its current state of being "a military-industrial complex masquerading as a nation" had further colored perceptions of the states, making them backward parochialists who didn't fit into the Anglian views of what it was to be part of civilized, cosmopolitan Galactic Humanity (even the Imperium, with all its pathological hatred of aliens, still knew how to behave toward others, it was often remarked).

That said, Penton and his Cabinet knew they couldn't simply ignore the Shepistani argument. Not if the Amplitur were still out there. "Sources in the Centrality are calling the claim of an Amplitur presence a bald-faced lie to justify, well, one presumes the mass-slaughter of innocent Centralists simply as an act of spite or foaming-at-the-mouth hatred of a 'psyker nation'," Penton remarked openly. "How right are they?"

"As much as the Shepistanis do seem to perform random acts of extraordinary violence for little reason, there is a method to that madness," Bronson observed. "The likelihood of the Shepistanis trying to attack the Embassy for the sheer joy of it or to disrupt the Esper tournament is preposterous. They are, after all, not immune to considerations of risk. They gain nothing that matches the trouble it would cause."

"While an Amplitur infestation is something they might well risk interstellar war to nip in the bud," Tevala said in continuation, showing he was on the same page as Bronson in these considerations. "Which leaves two logical probabilities: the Amplitur are still around, perhaps in small number, and managed to infiltrate the embassy with a deliberate eye toward generating a crisis... or something occurred that made the Shepistanis think an Amplitur was there, and either through miscommunication or deliberate malice on someone's part violence was the result."

"Military considerations or not, Lord Kapana, but we must continue to keep focus on the main issue," Baden-Grey said. "The Shepistanis assaulted a foreign embassy and its inhabitants were wiped out, including the dependents of the personnel. This must be responded to, forcefully."

"What do you say, Randolph?" Penton looked to his Deputy Prime Minister, Randolph Churchill-Hughes, who also held portfolio as the Secretary of State for the Home Office. The stocky, gruff Anglian army veteran gave his attention to Penton. "You have remained quiet on this issue, most uncharacteristically."

"I am not an unbiased observer, sir," Randolph answered. "It is my Office that has had to clean up the mess the blasted Shepistanis made on Pendleton. As far as I'm concerned they are a nation of bloodthirsty lunatics unfit for self-governance." Left unspoken was that Randolph had been the loudest voice for not accepting the Shepistani commitment to the Pendletonian operation in the first place.

Unable to resist the opening, Penton decided to inject humor into the situation. "Perhaps you should introduce to the Commons a Private Member's Bill to outlaw Shepistan then?"

There was laughter from all sources, though Duchess Diane did not look particularly amused. But Penton knew she couldn't help but not be. Her son Edward had just graduated from New Portsmouth and had a commission in the Navy. If there was some sort of war, Eddie Howard might end up in the shooting. "I do apologize for that one," Penton continued. "Anyway, I believe it prudent, given the situation, to recall our embassy staff from Shepistan. After all, if there is risk of Amplitur infestations in Shepistani space, we have to consider the safety of our personnel. Perhaps a group of volunteer officials can remain with Ambassador Philby, but I want as many of our people as possible out of harm's way."

"I'll send the orders immediately,' Baden-Grey said.

[Siege]

Remembrance of Apexaia
Planet Faust, the Centrality



The Remembrance of Apexaia hung motionlessly above the outskirts of the capital city of Faust, as it had for the last several days. No-one had left the massive disc-shaped craft so far, and the only communiques so far exchanged had been with the organization of the Esper Tournament, explaining how even though its facilities were more than adequate the Silver Shield delegation would remain aboard their ship until the tournament began. Because the ship didn't seem to carry any weapons the Centrality had let it be.

In the silent Sensorium, Foor was in communion with the shipmind itself. The Remembrance wasn't sentient in the way more primitive Sovereignty warships were. It didn't carry a CI; instead the ship itself was self-aware, a living psionic entity -- an Apexai wardisc, if one that had seen a great many refits over the centuries.

It was concerned. So were some of its crew. Shepistan had a reputation, one that was known even as far away as the Sovereignty. What's more, they were friendly with the Eternal Enemy, and the timing of the unrest coincided with the arrival of the Bragulan 'observers' on Faust -- which might be a coincidence, or which might not. Either way, it was now doubtful that the Tournament would go over without a hitch. Indeed, the onboard farsensors that tried to unravel the strands of the future said there was a chance of serious unrest.

In the end though it was Foor who decided, and he decided to stay. The diminutive Apexai had waited too long, and come too far to let his moment be snatched away by some pathetic humans squabbling amongst each other. He would show the galaxy the TRUE FORM of psionic greatness, and he would do it here, and if some two-bit anti-psion nutjob would try to stop him, well, they'd have another thing coming Byzon dammit!

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Imperial Palace, Imperial Center, Hyogo
Kansai Sector, Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya
14 August 3400

"Do we even have an embassy in Shepistan?" Empress Haruhi asked.

"Just one consulate that's already covered by the preexisting BFG network in Montgomery," Secretary of State Asahina replied. "We've already recalled most of our personnel, and last I checked, what's left of the consular staff are complying with the order to install additional BFGs as protection against further Amplitur incursions."

"Those things are still scurrying around? I was always under the impression that what few holdouts are remaining aren't in any position to do jack shit against the Sheppoes, the Dominoes, or anyone else. Nobody's seen an Amplitur warship in centuries, and repeated punitive expeditions through their former holdings have consistently yielded nothing of note."

"It's common knowledge that there were numerous Amplitur ships left unaccounted for at the end of the Amplitur War," Fleet Admiral Aquino remarked. "They might have been able to keep a few of their smaller ships in service in order to facilitate continued infiltration of Shepistani space. One of the more recent Shepistani expeditions through Amplitur space did manage to wrangle up at least five FTL-capable ships, or so ONI tells me. They could have just dropped off one of their own at some fringe world and allowed him to make his way to Montgomery and the Centrality Embassy."

"And at the same time as the ESPer Tournament, too. What excellent timing," Haruhi noted sarcastically. "Almost makes me want to pity the Centralists. Almost." A brief pause. "What's the status of our team, by the way?"

"They arrived a few days ago, along with an Imperial Marine company to provide escort for them," Field Marshal Takahashi said. "They've already been cleared with the Central Security Bureau, and they'll be assisting in providing security to the Tournament."

"Excellent. While I hope that the Marines' services won't be needed and the Tournament will proceed without a hitch, with the current situation, I doubt things will be proceeding that smoothly. Fucking craboid bastards. Shepistan should be outlawing them, not the Centrality."

"They've been trying to outlaw the Amplitur for centuries, and yet shit like this still happens," Fleet Admiral Aquino said. "Oh, well. They're on the other side of known space. It's not really our problem."

[Simon_Jester]

"...that all foreign embassies immediately implement local Blitzschlag fields to prevent a reoccurence of this tragic incident. The Bragulan government has been most helpful in this aspect."

Umerian Embassy to the Shepistani Republic
Day After President Sheppard's Speech

Being one of Shepistan's neighbors, there was no question of the Technocracy's need to maintain an embassy on Montgomery. However, this embassy had to be maintained in the face of the ultraviolent local color, which made for a rather unusual posting from the point of view of Umerian diplomats.

The original Umerian embassy had been accidentally vaporized by a malfunctioning defense missile during the Amplitur War, when a stray NIKE-HERACULES directed by a mind-controlled SHEPRAD defense operator had run out of fuel and crashed ballistically into the building. The Shepistanis had subsequently presented the drooling mindpuppeted vegetable once known as said missileer as evidence, which the Umerians had accepted- especially since they were at the time doing a booming business selling discount plutonium to Shepistan. The War forced the Sheppoes to burn through their massive stockpiles of nukes with unusual speed, after all, and Amplitur saboteurs' had made a painful dent in their own nukefactory facilities.

It was a measure of how desperate the war had been, for at no other time before or since had Shepistan ever been less than fully self-sufficient for its own nuking needs.

After the war, the Umerians rebuilt the embassy in an atmosphere of growing anti-esper paranoia among the Shepistanis. Knowing this, they had gone well out of their way to design the facility as a fortress against psychic intrusion: not so much to defend themselves, as to reassure the twitchy and heavily armed Sheppoes around them.

In particular, the embassy grounds were englobulated by null field projectors built into the embassy's basement. These psi-denial devices were passive in nature, but of great power, and they blocked psychic vibrations along a full thirty octaves of the psychic spectrum, going far beyond the highest and lowest bands used by any esper ever known to man.

The null field projectors were so hard-driven that they even interacted slightly with normal thought, creating a vague sense of numbness. The field also slightly suppressed impulse-control within the zone of effect: intelligence was untouched, but the subjects' restraint decreased markedly.

Normally this would place them beyond the parameters recommended by the Ministry of Welfare, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had successfully applied for an exemption. They had argued that the effects were temporary and (in this case) helpful in permitting the embassy staff to fully understand the Shepistani national mindset.

Of course, there was a cost. Those who were normally mentally stable outside the Umerian Embassy tended to be a touch... uncontrolled. Slightly insane, perhaps, but what truly sympathetic person isn't at least a little bit mad? Those who were normally slightly insane tended to become fixated and prone to wild fits of uncontrolled behavior, typically deranged laughter and intense dedication to special projects.

And those who were truly insane were driven beyond insanity into that otherworldly territory found beyond the other side of madness. They became... shroomsane.

It was in this psychological regime that Doctor Sivana spent most of his time these days, and it was in the height of shroomsanity that he greeted the Shepistani inspection team in the embassy lobby.

The Shepistanis had wheeled in a heavy cart, pushed by three men, featuring an emergency mobile Blitzschlag Field Generator. In addition, another team carried PKE devices to detect any unwanted psychic vibrations. The PKE units were tuned so carefully that they were even capable of picking up subtle Feng Shui vibrations from inanimate objects, at least under ideal conditions. Any psykery, or residue of psyker witchcraft, they found in the Umerian embassy would be the subject of a powerful inquisition.

They were met in the lobby by a wrinkled little man with a great beak of a nose. From the look of his face, he was not so much a victim of natural aging as unnatural aging, the effects of unknown and exotic chemical and physical processes on his internal structure. But he appeared to be active and in control of his faculties as he nodded at the Shepistani PSICOP team.

"Greetings. I am Doctor Thaddeus Sivana, SCIENCE! officer for the embassy, here to satisfy you that we are in full compliance with your new requirements... in our own way."

He led them into a room cluttered with various devices of unknown types. "This is my personal laboratory; I have cleared a space for the demonstration. My lovely assistant Andrea will help you connect your Blitzschlag Device into the high voltage power network; the rest of you would be advised to prepare your PKEs to detect Blitzschlag radiations."

Over the next several minutes, the electrical contacts were made. Standing well back, the Shepistanis and Umerians watched as Dr. Sivana threw the massive power switch.

The effects were... unusual. There was the normal "Wark! Wark!" of all Sheptronics on startup, of course, but the machine soon began straining and vibrating, then let out a dull whine, trying to pierce the impenetrable murk of the surrounding null field. The difficulty of the task was not unlike trying to shine a beam of light through molasses.

Even at full bigawatt-range power consumption, the device's field propagated no more than two meters from the emitter array.

The head of the Shepistani survey team waved his PKE around.

"Well, fuck. I still got nothing. You sure that thing is plugged in?"

Wordlessly, Dr. Sivana opened a cabinet and retrieved a bag of marshmallows. He then tossed one towards the device. On contact, it swiftly caught fire in a crackling electric arc and vaporized, leaving no traces but a thin fog of powdered carbon in the air and a smell of s'mores gone wrong. Then he let out a dry, patronizing chuckle.

"Heh. Heh. Heh. Yes, my friend, I believe it is. As you can see, even at the full output of one gigaschlag, the psychic interference projected by this device penetrates our own anti-psi defenses to only a modest degree. An organic brain, even one of the much-storied power output of the infamous Amplitur, would be still less effective. While it is remotely conceivable that an incredibly powerful biological telepath might achieve limited psychoactive effects while literally in contact with the subject, mind control over such long distance scales as 'the other side of the room' would require mentalic abilities that are nothing short of godlike. The idea of controlling a significant fraction of the staff would be... Heh. Heh. Laughable."

"What if, uh... ah-ha!" The Shepistani was operating at full-out paranoia now, an impressive sight if ever there was one. "What if one of the goddamn craboids grabbed one of your guys, piggybacked on him, and made him go into the generator room and blow it up?"

"What do you think robot minions are for? There are multiple layers of fully automated security systems around the primary generator, armed with sensors and death rays of my own design. There are equally automated cutouts engaging the secondary and tertiary backup generators for just such an emergency! I assure you, our psi-deflector shields will be quite operational should your Amplitur friends arrive. Heh. Heh. Heh." Again, Dr. Sivana let out that irritating, mocking chortle.

"You still gotta have a BFG running."

"Oh, we will, we will! Our own embedded cold-fusion generators are quite capable of handling the additional load, thanks to some... minor enhancements of my own design. It will be somewhat superfluous, much like running your space-heater and your air-conditioner at the same time, but what's a little unnecessary tritium burned between friends, eh?"

"Plus we gotta do PKE scans of the whole place."

"Our technical monitoring staff will be keeping eye out for bugs while you keep an eye out for crabs, of course, but in principle I see no reason why we cannot demonstrate that we have no esper threats to hide from you here..."

"And you gotta follow the import rules."

"Naturally, naturally! The ambassador has informed me that for the duration of the emergency, he is willing to comply with inspection of all shipments to establish that they do not contain inimical life forms, craboid or otherwise. He has also instructed me to mention that the Technocracy offers its assistance in training special craboid-sniffing PUPPERS to assist in this task..."

---

Having complied with the locals' insistent requirements, the Umerians proceeded to wheel the fully-powered BFG into a disused storage closet and forgot about it entirely. They had other problems...

But with the Shepistani special request, the Bragulans gladly complied in installing a Blitzschlag Field Generator to their facility. A, as in singular.



Because, in an exercise of idle curiosity by the local IBGV agents on Montgommery, they took the single BFG, linked it to a PKE, and connected it to the Druga-3 over-the-horizon (OTH) radar powered by a radio-ionic thermonuclear generator (RTG) - thus quadruplicating the combined effectiveness of the TLAs.

By connecting the BFG to the embassy's modest-sized communications antenna (which had the secondary use of cooking any mutant geese in the local aerospace), and combining everything from BFG fields to the transmissions of vacuum tube-powered radios OTH XYZ-band radars, and the gamma ray/x-ray arrays, microwave, miniwave and macrowave and maybe even tidal wave emissions and so on and such forth, the raw power of this frankenstinian electronic warfare array expanded at a geometric rate.

The Bragulans chuckled and laughed boisterously as they began bouncing their transmissions off the electro-ionosphere, directing it over the horizon and shooting arc-beams of invisible cosmic radiation towards other peoples, places and events otherwise uncovered by the Shepistani BFG-grid. A few of the other embassies slow to comply with the Shepistani BFG implementation order were bombarded, such as the Solarian Embassy (if there was one on Montgommery), and those who did not cower in shielded bunkers but instead foolishly wandered around in the open would come to know the effect of what would, in later days, come to be known as the Bragulan Brainpecker. Those fancy shmancy posthumanoids with cybernetics, particularly in their brains, with classy and expensive branded consumer organics and iBrains and such began to experience nausea and vomiting, dizziness and disorientation, vertigo, and severely painful headaches...

In the end, the Shepistani Intelligence Service somehow managed to classify the Bragulan activities and their Druga-3 super-system, keeping it a secret whilst the mass mayhem they caused somehow came out to Shepistan's advantage. Quietly, the SIS began installing reflectors on several innocuous government buildings, reflectors that would deliberately redirect the Druga-3's copious emissions towards disliked things, such as flocks of birds (whose internal biological compasses would get screwed up when exposed to the invisible beams, causing them to fly into windows and die - or, sometimes, go berserk and attack people in flocks!), or oceans (causing whales to inexplicably beach themselves), and even other people's embassies.

Umerian Embassy to the Shepistani Republic
The Day After The Day After The Day After President Sheppard's Speech

Claude Lefebvre of the French Empire had been in the Umerian embassy on Shepistan because of a tricky paperwork problem faced by his export business when the Embassy Incident blew. Shepistani gendarmes had raided the Centralist Embassy, causing massive destruction, and claiming that the Centralists had harbored one of the powerfully psychic Amplitur.

Claude himself did not know what to think. On the one hand, he found the Centrality more than a little disturbing and hostile, somewhat reminiscent of the Prussian League. On the other, it became increasingly plain the longer he stayed in Shepistan that the locals despised all things French, for reasons he did not entirely understand. But in fine Gallic tradition, he shrugged and carried on, regardless of what they thought. Business was business, after all.

Today, when he arrived the Umerian embassy seemed... disturbed. Among other things, there was a great deal of cursing, and many people working in the common areas who he did not normally see. He had dealt with many of their mid-ranking officials for quite some time now, and thus had a good working relationship with them. When he found one of the members of the Ministry of Finance staff otherwise unoccupied in the cafeteria, he sat down to ask a few questions. The Umerian sat up with a start when he saw the Frenchman across from him.

"Whuh- oh, hi Claude!"

"Is it just me, or is everyone troubled lately? Are you worried that the Shepistanis will attack this embassy too?"

"Hmmm. Not really; we passed their inspection tour easily enough. You know how much we turn up the null field here. It gives us much the same degree of security, just through a different technique."

"I suppose you're right." Claude winced and rubbed his scalp; he was told that you got used to the strange feelings created by the hyper-boosted null field bathing the embassy, but it always disconcerted him a little when he noticed it was there. It was like being a little bit drunk, perhaps?

"What's bugging me is that I can't take my hovercar off the embassy grounds: I have to do all my work over the landlines. Everyone else has the same problem."

"Why?"

"Some kind of e-war bombardment. It keeps frying high end electronics, even low-end electronics. A few people who took their flying cars off the embassy grounds when it hit had malfunctions..."

"Ah, yes. I have heard the news too. Spots all over the planet; no one really knows why. There have been reports of a repetitive tapping noise- no, too powerful to be called that..."

"Yeah. We've got a few people on staff with cybernetics or implants; it's hell on them whenever they're off the embassy grounds and this thing fires up."

"But inside the embassy they are safe?"

"Seems like. We've got the SCIENCE! officer working on it."

Hmm. Claude had to admit he was curious. Perhaps these Umerians would be able to tell him more about what was going on? He himself was more than a little concerned about the sporadic transmissions; if one of them struck the warehouses where his own goods were stored, he could be ruined. As yet there seemed no real danger of this, but whatever the threat was, it bombarded civilian areas and foreign embassies seemingly at will. If there was a defense against it, it was no doubt worth some of his time to find out.

---

To his surprise, Claude had little trouble obtaining access to Dr. Sivana's personal laboratory. As he approached the door, he heard a shout of "Come in, come in!" from inside. A little old man pulled his head from the interior of some large, awkward-looking device he'd been working on.

"Who are you? Never mind. It doesn't matter. Take this hydro-spanner and tighten those bolts- in opposite pairs, mind you; I need a good seal!" There was something in the man's voice that demanded obedience; Claude did so.

A few paces away, another man with a battered face seemed to have been similarly conscripted, working on the far end of the unknown apparatus- though from his lab coat, perhaps the poor fellow worked for the professor all the time. Continuing to work on the bolts without being entirely sure why, he turned his head. "What is going on?"

"We're working on an analyzer to examine those e-war bursts: we call it the Brainpecker. When we get the pan-frequency detectors working, we'll hook it up to a standard antenna-onna-stick and poke it outside next time they hit us. We should at least be able to get patterns and vector from that."

"I see. By the way, my name is Claude."

"Call me... Igor."

There was a spark and a hint of ozone from over where Dr. Sivana was working, but it settled soon enough as the senior Umerian shouted: "Nothing to worry about! I'm all right!"

Igor continued. "Me and Andrea are Dr. Sivana's min- er, students. You?"

"I am just an interested bystander, as it were. What do you know about this 'Brainpecker?'

"Well, the interference damages electronics, suggesting some kind of electromagnetic attack, possibly with minor exotic components. But it also seems to come to a screeching halt when it hits the edge of the embassy null field. That suggests some kind of esper component. That's why we're going to need to modify our antennas, you understand."

So it is the null field that grants protection? Interesting.

The work continued. Dr. Sivana, Igor, Andrea, and now Claude labored mightily to prepare the apparatus: the vacuum chambers, the turbopumps, the electronics, optronics, spintronics, and positronics. Claude was amazed at how fast everyone seemed to be working; even so it was hours before they were ready. And yet he could not compel himself to leave- he was caught up in something larger than himself, some spark of genius at work here...

Finally, one of the embassy security troopers came rushing down the stairs to the lab. She was panting.

"Doctor Sivana! It's starting again!"

"Very well. Claude, Igor, engage the antigravity pallet and bring the main unit along. Andrea, carry the 'scope! To the roof!"

As they emerged, Claude saw something at once beautiful and disturbing: a manmade (alien-made?) aurora. A spherical surface about a hundred meters across, enveloping the embassy grounds, glowed with faint iridescent light, of every imaginable color of the rainbow, and a number that could not be imagined without the aid of powerful drugs.

Dr. Sivana tapped his chin. "Ah, yes. Magnetopsychodynamic ectoplasma discharges. Fascinating. If only I had the proper capture equipment..."

Igor called out "Sir, shall I extend the antenna-onna-stick?"

"Yes! GO!" Claude heard a mechanical rattle as a long telescoping pole with a grid of metal and plastic mesh on the end rose, the heavy piece of equipment they'd assembled attached to it at the base.

Andrea, monitoring the readings on an oscilloscope, called to the doctor as she frantically disconnected wires and inserted an adaptor "Readings are off the scale! Getting a bigger scale!"

"Excellent! Carry on!"

After some minutes, examining his readouts, Dr. Sivana nodded. "Good enough, good enough. Igor, retract the antenna-onna-stick! Andrea, power down the equipment! We have what we need here."

They retreated to the lab to confer, after some minutes' work on the equipment by the minions graduate students. Dr. Sivana was first to speak.

"So the radiation seems to be coming from a point in deep space. Andrea, have your telescopic scans revealed anything along that vector?"

"No, doctor, they haven't. Nothing in visual, IR, or UV on the thirty-centimeter rig, and I haven't tried to turn on the radio detectors with the Brainpecker out there."

Claude leaned over to Igor. "Is the telescope standard gear for your embassies? I had not heard of such a thing in France."

"Oh, no. This is just Andrea's hobbyist rig, you see."

Meanwhile, Dr. Sivana was musing quietly, stroking his chin.

"Hmm. If we see nothing in that direction, then the radiation..."

Claude, caught up in the moment, was quite surprised to hear himself saying "then it must be bouncing to us from somewhere else!"

"Heh. Heh. Heh. Elementary, my dear Francophone, elementary. Now we need only calculate from where..."

---

Private Laboratory of Dr. Sivana, SCIENCE! Officer for the Shepistani Embassy
Some Hours Later

"So the results then, are conclusive. What we are seeing is a transmitter sited in the region corresponding to the Bragulan Embassy, with many of the typical signatures of Bragulan technology: excessive radiation emissions, high voltage thermionics... hooked up to a Blitzschlag Field Generator. These radiations form a beam which can be reflected off the ionosphere to distant targets all over the planet."

Claude sniffed. "How rude of them."

"Indeed. I am reminded of a petty difficulty once faced by my mentor, Guy de Hatfield."

"I thought you said your mentor was Dr. Murderstein?"

"Oh yes, yes. You see, Doctor Ulrich von Murderstein was my tutor in the ways of SCIENCE! But there were things he could not teach me, lessons he himself had not mastered. And thus, I was forced to go elsewhere, to study under the famed Guy de Hatfield, to master the ways of... dickery."

(Stick figure by Randall Munroe, here used purely as illustration-of-concept)

Claude did not follow most of Dr. Sivana's explanation, but he thought he grasped the basics.

"So, Doctor, your plan is to take this offensive source of radiations and deliver a riposté tuned to disable it?"

"Hmm. Laughably imprecise, but as good as a non-mathematical description can be expected to be, I suppose. Beyond that, having done so, I intend to deliver a counterattack- not harmful or dangerous, but aimed more at psychological warfare than at anything else. To discourage them from being so indiscriminate in their activity, you see."

"Hmm. Appropriate, I suppose."

"Appropriate... and amusing. Yess... heh. Heh. HEH. HA. BWAAA-HA-HA-HA-HAAA! Igor, fetch the atomic disintegrators! Andrea, the plasma phase inversion tubes! For SCIENCE!"

---

Bragulan Consulate, Capital Wasteland, Montgomery, Shepistan
The Next Morning

Blargag Brewski looked around the control room at his fellows. "So, comrades, who shall we scramble next?" The Bragtech specialists at the embassy had never had it so good as these last few days. With the addition of the three-letter BFG to their existing passive-aggressive sensors, they had shifted their equipment by three letters too: into massive-aggressive sensors, with which they held the humans of Montgomery in terror... with the full cooperation of the Shepistani government! No one would dare to stop them now...

No answer. He would have to think of something himself. "Hmms. It has been some hours since we last brainpecked the Umerians." The Bragulan senior technican glanced at a Mang in Black from the Shepistani Intelligence Service. The SIS man said nothing for a moment, then adjusted his sunglasses.

"I am not here. I know nothing of the so-called 'Bragulan Brainpecker.' The SIS knows nothing of the 'Bragulan Brainpecker.' The SIS does not think the Umerians are a bunch of dirty long-haired librul scientists who need to be taken down a peg. The SIS does not think the Umerian embassy needs to be brainpecked."

"I see, comrade MIB-sky. I see. Ho-ho-ho, you should have been born a Bragulan! Even with a puny human brain you can doublethink!" This led to a round of hearty approving laughter among the Bragulans. One of the technicians, feeling a bit excessive, gave the Shepistanimerican a hearty backslap that would normally have spinecrushed him, but the MIB was an enhanced posthuman and thus rode out the blow in good cheer.

"Very well, we shall brainpeck the Umerians! Align the antenna! Fire up the BFG!"

For a few seconds, everything was fine in the control room. Then they heard an ominous hum...

"Sir! Look at the voltage displays!"

The pen and paper recorder was going very wobbly... not good.

"Check the vacuum tubes! Quickly!"

Junior Cub Scout Technicians with shopping carts full of spare tubes darted between the massive tube banks of the antenna farm, a gigantic building-sized complex. Gatling tube autoloaders were all very well for the Imperial Navy, but here they needed more finesse... hence the cub scouts, whose small size helped them to go and find out what was wrong with the apparatus.

"Cub Scouts report no hardware malfunctions, sir! It must be coming at us from outside, some kind of cascading resonance!" Briefly he considered trying to improvise some kind of anti-mass spectrometer, but that would not work. The ominous hum was growing louder... SHITS! Someone must have spotted their electronic warfare and decided to retaliate with passive-aggressive systems of their own. Not good! Blargag looked over at the MIB.

"Someone is ECMing us back! Do you know anything about this?"

"No, I don't. The Shepistani Republic has authorized no such attack."

"When you say you don't know, do you mean you don't know, or you do know? We need to know! Now!"

"This is a "I really don't know" I don't know." Is that true, or does he actually know and just know that he doesn't want us to know that he knows... no! There was no time for doublethinking, for the ominous hum was getting even louder!

"Sir, the ominous hum is getting even louder! Voltage approaching critical breakdown!"

"SHITS! Get the cub scouts out of there, there's nothing they can do!" The operators transferred their orders through the installation's mighty loudspeakers and klaxons, as the cub scouts scurried for safety. Not a moment too soon, either, for mere seconds after the last Junior Technicians scrambled into their protective little minibomb-shelters, the first vacuum tubes blew out. Showers of broken glass and electrical arcs began jumping across the tube racks, blowing apart even more tubes.

Soon, the failures had claimed countless thousands of the tubes... the Bragulan Brainpecker was off the air for now, its tubes overloaded and destroyed by a reflected phase-inverted version of their own powerful signals. Replacements could be had, but it would take many bear-hours of loyal Cub Scout labor.

Nor was that the worst of it. For soon, from the installation's loudspeakers, came the most horrible music: Umerian psywar broadcasts!

"Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
Que tu cuerpo es pa darle alegria y cosa buena!
Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
Heeeeeey Macarena!"

The Bragulans felt... strangely compelled, by some kind of sinister pan-species force. At first they wondered if it was some craboid psyker attack, but it could not be, for they were protected by their psi-disrupting ushankas and psi-detecting killbots! Even so, though, it commanded them! Slowly but surely, they felt the urge to... dance!

It was so un-Byzonic! He was not sure what he was doing, as there was no word for "dancing" in Bragulan Newspeak, but he knew it was wrong. Must... resist... RAAAAGH! There was only one answer, one way to break the spell. As always, the solution lay in Byzon's Little Green Book:

"There are very few human problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives"

"RAAAAGH!" Blargag drew his personal sidearm, a Liberator pistol he had kept with him for years, because of its sentimental value and his fond memories of Lower Middle School. He raised the pistol, and...

BLAM! BLAM!

His bullets found the control room loudspeakers. The horrible music, it stopped!

The technicians stopped their accursed prancing and arm-waving and stood as if dazed at the horror, Blargag rallied them. "You! Shut off the power! And get rifles! Shoot out the speakers down in the tube banks; we must silence these broadcasts! Then tell the Cub Technicians it is safe to come out. We will begin repairs at once..."

SHITS! The damage was all reparable, but their schedule had been set back badly.

Perhaps engaging in electronic warfare with the Umerians so carelessly had been hasty. Theirs was a nation of technocraticoes and mad scienticians- perhaps a formidable foe on the field of electronic warfare...

[Lonestar]

Press Room
Foreign Ministry Buiding
Chesapeake



"Alright you bastards settle down, settle down." Foreign Minister Sir Benton Mackaye said to the assembled press. The foreign ministry beat was much sought after for members of the major Newsie Outlets, not the least because Mackaye's low opinion of the press always ensured good soundbites. Mackaye cleared his throat and began reading from a 3x5 card.


"The Grand Dominion congradulates the Shepistani Federation's swift action against the Xenoist Pysker Threat that snuck in through the lackadaisical measures the Centrality took for it's own security. While it is unfortunate that some embassy staff and citizens were killed, the Centrality government is the one who brought this on their own people, not the Shepistani Federation. The Grand Dominion will be adding additional security measures to all foreign embassies, consulates, and legations within Dominion Space. All foreign legation personnel who are pyskers must register with a special office that is being created. In addition, any diplomatic packages that have suspicious readings in regards to pyschic activity will be held and turned back. Do any of you retards have a question? Yes you, the effete Anglian in the back."

"Will there be changes in security at ports of entry for normal travel?"

Mackaye turned back from the podium and looked at the Seal of the Dominion Foreign Ministry behind him. "Whew, for a moment I thought I was at the DPS press conference. Go ask Attorney General Ramierez. Next?" He seemed to point at random into the crowd and a handful of Newsies began to speak at once.

"Well, if you can't figure it out this conference is over. Speak to the press officer." With that Mackaye left the Podium.

[Shroom Man 777]

"No! No! No!" Nah shook his head. He didn't do his daring deeds to get haggled out of his profits. He had to repulse those damn Anglian boarders and fly through the maelstroms of shoal space to evade the entire Coalition fleet. He demanded more. "I demand more! More quatloos, Java. I want more quatloos!"

He stamped his feet to accentuate his point.

"Bona nai kachu." Java growled menacingly before leaving Nah Oslo to his own devices.

"Damn," Oslo muttered to himself as he watched his customer leave the port. "Now what?"

THE PENDLETON PENULTIMATUM

It was a stroke of good fortune that another ship landed beside the Century Egg, and from it came a tall, dark and handsome figure - imposing as he was silhouetted by the light of his starship's interiors as he walked down the ramp and strode out into the open. His cape billowed in the wind and he struck a dramatic pose to awe all those around him.

Nah Oslo recognized him immediately.



"BLANDO!" Nah hollered as he ran over to his good buddy, the previous owner of the Century Egg before Nah won it by cheating in a card game and getting caught and running away with the illicitly-won starship. Nah laughed and hoped his good friend didn't keep any grudges. "BLANDO DULLRISSIAN!"

"Nah!" Blando laughed as well, a semi-cackling, semi-mu-wa-ha-ha-ing, laugh as he went over to shake hands with the man whose demise he had long planned since that fateful day. "Nah Oslo! How are you, you scoundrel?"

"I'm great! Outran some Anglian cruisers over at Bannerman, made the run in less than twelve parsecs myself," Nah bragged.

"Oh really?" Blando smiled politely. Then while Nah beamed and looked around, making sure everyone heard his bragging, Blando rolled his eyes. "That's very nice, Nah."

"So, whatcha up to, mang?" Nah asked.

"Oh, nothing much. Just importing some tibanna gas. Turns out the only gas plant on this planet was at Dogadishu and the Anglians forgot to tell the Shepistanis 'no disintegrations'. So the Pendletonians need something to warm their stoves and heaters, and my gas plant is right out there at Lochleys. It's perfect," Blando left his exact profits to Nah's imagination. He snickered when Nah's face turned green and scrunchy with jealousy. "So, what are you up to this time, you plucky ragtag rogue you?"

"Hahaha!" Nah laughed really loudly. Yes, finally, someone had recognized what he was capable of and was saying it out loud for other people to hear. It was gratifying, to say the least. He was called plucky! Ragtag! And described as a rogue! Oh man! "I was selling some stuff to this deadbeat named Java the Butt. No wonder they call him the Butt, he's about as cheap as one!"

Nah made sure everyone around him heard it right. He saw Blando wince and a few other bystanders making themselves scarce. It wasn't because of the bad pun, because Nah knew his jokes were witty. It must be because no one poo-pooed a big guy like Java lightly, but Nah knew he was hot and there was nothing anyone - even someone like Java - could do about it.

Yeah, that's right, you heard it right Tamrin! You too Balthier! Better watch out!

"That guy thinks he's so big, but that's just 'cause he checks his weight every morning!" Nah laughed again. "So he chickened out on the deal like a big turkey. It's not like my services come cheap, not after throwing those Anglians off my damn ship. You think anyone's got the stones to deal with a plucky ragtag rogue like me, Blando? Someone who isn't a rundown deadbeat."

"I think I have just the guy..." Blando replied. He had to restrain himself from laughing. This was going to be too easy!

***

Nah had been sent to Pendleton to sell arms to the anti-Anglian insurgents, the slavers who railed against the occupation and bayed for the restoration of the old ways. With no method to strike against the Anglians and their knights in powered armor, they had to content themselves with reprisals against the freed slaves to teach them of their place in the world. But this was not enough. The Anglians and their cohorts seemed intent on staying for good. So they sought aid, sought weapons from abroad, and the smuggled Bragtech weaponries were part of that solution. Yet they did not count on one single inscrutable thing. No one did.

Nah Oslo.

What a bunch of cheapskates, he thought. Which was why he was out looking for a new customer, and like a good friend who didn't keep any grudges, Blando obliged.



The man emerged from the darkness of the night like a black raven, with wings of midnight, a breast with a poorly painted white skull upon it, and a crown of receding hairlines. He spread his arms, drawing his PUZI and FUC-10 submachine guns as he did so to intimidate all those beholding his menacing sight. That skull on his chest marked him as a feared member of the dreaded freed slave death squads, those of the emancipated who wished to exact revengeance on their former masters. Though such vigilantism was illegal under the new Anglian rule, there were still those of the now-advantaged classes of freed slaves who supported these vigilantes and masked avengers in their war against the slavers, for sometimes in the outlying provinces they were the only defense against the slaver insurgency's reprisals. The white skulls on their chests symbolized the punishment they would enact on their former oppressors, and thus they were punishers.

"You better not be a cheapskate like that other guy," Nah didn't like this, not one bit. One look at the man with his guns and his skull suit told him everything he needed to know. Crap, this guy's too cheap to even buy a wig. "Got the dough?"

Yeah," said a voice that wasn't from the punisher man, whose face (and the receding hairline above it) was motionless. Nah looked around to find the source of the voice that didn't have a receding hairline. He turned and saw -



- a third figure enter the area, a man with great wavy hair, a lovely mustache, and a great fashion sense Nah could appreciate. "I don't know if you've ever seen a hundred thousand dollars before, except perhaps in the movies. But let me show you something that gets lost in the translation," he produced the currency, and Nah's eyes widened.

He had never seen so much money before!



His mouth widened too, possibly widening even wider than his wide-open eyes, and teeth started filling his O-shaped gaping mouth, turning the gape into a smile - a strangely circular half-gaping half-smiling expression. It was as though Nah Oslo was performing a strange human impersonation of a lamprey's mouth parts.

"Brewbacca!" he shouted excitedly, somehow without even moving his wide-O mouth parts. "Get these fine gentlemen some coffee. Would you like some sugar?"

"Some milk please," the fancy pants person in the fancy pants said. "I prefer mine white. 'Cause I'm white. My name, I mean. I'm -"

"Milk! Okay!" Nah excitedly cut him off. "Brew, get him some milk! Okay!"

As Brewbacca howled, because he burned his paws on some hot coffee, Nah Oslo excitedly looked back and forth from the punisher to the white man. The white guy had such lovely hair, and Nah started thinking about getting his hair done right after he got the money. But the other guy almost didn't have any hair, and looked so angry. Nah wondered if it was because they had sold his wig just to get enough money to pay him for the shipment. Yes, that must be it. They had to sell the punisher's wig and reveal his receding hairline so they could get enough money to pay him, Nah Oslo, smuggler extraordinaire! Yes!

"Yes!" Nah blurted out. He was so excited that he was shaking now, almost to the point of hopping and bouncing around where he stood. The white man and the punisher looked at him strangely, but he wasn't looking at them anymore, he was looking at the money that he would soon have. Yes, the money. Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!

"What?" asked the white guy.

"Yes!" Nah repeated himself, louder this time. He even bounced! God yes!



Brewbacca brought the coffee over, and as the white guy drank his and cursed as he spilled some on his dress, and while the punisher glared menacingly and scowled at his own cup of coffee, Nah and Brew began unloading their shipment of arms. They were fully halfway to emptying the Century Egg's cargo bay when Nah suddenly and abruptly told Brewbacca to stop.

He had a brilliant idea. Another one.

He walked out of the cargo bay and confronted the white man and the punisher.

"Yes?" the white man asked, before taking another sip of Brewbacca's coffee. He was about to give a compliment when Nah replied.

"No," Nah merely said.

"What?" white raised an eyebrow.

"No," Nah crossed his arms.

"Excuse me?" white narrowed his eyes, narrowing the whites of his eyes. Beside him, the punisher also tensed.

"You heard me right," Nah made a vicious grin.

"And what did I hear?" white asked.

"Two words," Nah returned white's narrowed eyes with a squint of his own. "More. Quatloos."

"Oh, fuck you!" spat white. "Frank, kill him!"

"With pleasure," the punisher replied as he pulled out his PUZI. He was about to squeeze the trigger when, suddenly, a bellicosely guttural laughter filled the hangar.

"HO HO HO HO HO!" it was an unmistakable laugh, followed by cold emotionless Buttese. "Soong peetch alay."

White did a spit take, staining his shirt with coffee as Java the Butt arrived to the scene.



Nah Oslo froze. No. This can't be happening. No no no no no no no no no...

"Ohta su marvalic plesodoro," Java barked. "Chespo kutata kreesta krenko, nyakoska!"

No no no no no no no no no...

With that cue, several of Java's goons entered the hangar, riding down the escalator as they did so.



No no no no no no no no no...

Nah recognized them immediately. Mercenaries. As deadly as any Klavostani Muj-for-hire, as delicate as an MPU thug out of space apartheid, and as ruthless as a Solarian Replicant PMC.

It can't be... but it was!



Mangdalorians.

They moved to surround the Century Egg, encircling Nah Oslo and Brewbacca, as well as the white guy and the punisher.

"Bona nai kachu." Java barked a harsh laugh. Then, in finality, he told his men to kill them.

All of them.

"Poodoo."

The mercenaries moved in for the kill. Nah Oslo closed his eyes and hoped it wouldn't hurt as much as that one time he got thrown in jail and the other inmates took turns stabbing him in the back. No. No. Please no. Not that. Anything but that. No. He hoped it wouldn't hurt as much as... as much as how he felt like when those goddamn Tamrins and Balthiers and everyone else in the fucking galaxy looked down on him and saw him as a loser. No. Not that. No. Please. No... please.

At least it would be over now. Those fuckers. Those fucking fuckers. He'd never have to see their faces again. Nah Oslo opened his eyes and quivered as he looked at those soulless Mangdalorians with their T-shaped visors. His knees grew weak, his bladder sphincters felt slackened. No. He tried to straighten himself. It was over now. Those fucking Tamrins and Balthiers could finally have the last laugh.

Those fucking Tamrins.

Those fucking Balthiers.

He could see their faces laughing at him under those goddamn Mangdalorian helmets.

No no no no no no no no no...

"NO!!!" Nah roared as he reared up and pulled out his blaster rifle with lightning speed, striking a dashing pose as he did. He'd take them all down with him! He'd take them all on!



"YES!" he shouted in mighty defiance. But before he could even squeeze a shot, all of the Mangdalorians snapped and shot at him. He screamed and threw himself down to the floor while angry-red blaster bolts screamed overhead, exploding harmlessly against... something. Nah Oslo screamed as the loud noises hurt his ears. "Shit! No!"

It was then that the punisher drew forth his PUZI, his FAC-10 and his receding hairline, exploiting the Mangdalorians' temporary distraction to launch his own counter-attack. He was a freed slave, a vigilante, and the sight of Java and these slaver insurgents drove him to an incomprehensible rage. His face was a mask of anger, an emotionless, bland but slightly scowling mask of anger. With a receding hairline.

He opened fire with his PUZIs and FAC-10s, and at this sudden outburst of violence, the Mangdalorians dove for cover. The hangar became a storm of violence. A firefight unlike any other erupted - with the Mangdalorians on one side, the punisher on the other, and Nah Oslo in the middle.

"Crickey!" one of the Mangdalorians cursed.

"Shit!" the white guy shouted. He had been standing near Nah Oslo when the shooting started. He had been grazed by a blaster and was bleeding. Blood began staining his white clothing, and in shock he exclaimed at this. "Nobody makes me bleed my own blood!"

Then a blaster bolt struck him, vaporizing a large chunk of his body. Assuming his torso was a spherical mass of water, and generously estimating thorough vaporization, the weapon yield was probably in the megajoules.

His bag of money was unvaporized though, untouched by the megajoules. It fell to the floor.

"Shit!" Nah Oslo screamed. He was blind! Or, at least, his eyeglasses had fallen off his face when he dove for cover. It was the year 3400, it was the future, but he still had eyeglasses. And now he was blind without them! "My glasses! My glasses! I can't be seen without my glasses!"

As the punisher exchanged fire with the Mangdalorians, Nah Oslo crawled feebly whilst blindly groping at the ground. He touched something and pulled it towards him, and when it was near enough he saw it for what it was.



The sight of money was enough to correct any and all visual impairments in Nah Oslo's eyes. He didn't even have to pay to get surgerized. He laughed. In the middle of the firefight, he laughed! Yes! This was it!

"Brewbacca, get the engines going! We're getting out of here!" he shouted. Brewbacca's reply was an inarticulate bloodcurdling scream of pure horror. The furvert and former coffee shop mascot hadn't signed on for this, he was trained to brew coffee - hence his name, Brewbacca -he had zero experiences in firefights with punishers and Mangdalorians. "Shut the fuck up! Fuck the shipments, I got the money! I got the money!"

With that, Brewbacca roared and despite being as blind as a leper, Nah Oslo could hear the Century Egg's systems power up. Evidently, others also heard his pronunciations, as the blaster fire towards him was intensificating.

"Shit!" he looked at the Mangdalorians shooting at him. They were all blurry but as he squinted his eyes their forms resolved themselves, and Nah Oslo saw their true forms. "No... it can't be!"

But it was!

He saw them coming at him. He saw them all. The Mangdalorians had removed their helmets to show him their true faces. He beheld their visages and recognized them for who they were: John Tamrin and Baltheir Meidan.



Rage coursed through Nah Oslo's veins upon seeing that sight. He felt his resolve harden, amongst other things.

"YOU!" Nah Oslo screamed as he pulled out his blaster and began shooting at them blindly. "John Tamrin! Baltheir Meidan! Why won't you leave me alone?! Why?! Why!? WHY?! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOUR GLOWWORMS! FUCK YOUR STRAHLS! FUCK YOU FUCKERERS! MOTHERFUCKERRRRRRS!"



His shots went far and wide, Nah couldn't even hit water if he fell off a submarine, so it was no wonder that his shots missed the broad side of the barn even though they were all inside the barn. But nonetheless! The megajoules blew fist-sized chunks off prefabricated plaster off the walls, causing Mangdalorians and their white-clad clones to duck and take cover to avoid the storm of shrapnel.

"Haha!" Nah cackled as his decisive action was rewarded by a massive explosion, but then he cursed. "Craps!"

The explosion was from an exploding fuel line, which was feeding fuel to the Century Egg's fuel tanks, which Nah just remembered was still half-empty - and it would stay half-empty because the fuel line was too busy exploding to refuel their ship. Still, with money in hand, Nah Oslo scurried back into the Century Egg, running for his life while the disorientated Mangdalorians shot at him. Even the punisher had joined in shooting at him!

"Aw, fuck you!" Nah spat to the lot of them as the Century Egg's doors sealed shut. He then clambered to the cockpit and fell on his command chair, after banging his head on an overhead console. "Fuck!"

He looked down and saw that he hadn't lost his eyeglasses after all. They were hanging from his neck because they had a strap on them. Man. Oh man. Nah replaced them back on his face.

The Century Egg rocked hard. He looked down and saw that both the slaver insurgents and the freed slave vigilantes had begun looting the pile of Bragtech weaponry he had delivered, and that they were taking these weapons and shooting him with it.

"Bantha poodoo! he could hear Java's garbled voice coming out of the radio. "Bargon wanchi kox paa -"

"Give us our fucking money back!" interrupted another transmission. "You fucked us! You dick!"

"That's cause you're all assholes!" And dicks fuck assholes! Nah laughed before he killed the radios and brought the engines to life. The Century Egg began screeching upwards towards Pendleton's tropospheres. The ship was an old bird, and used turboramscramfanjets for atmospheric flight before switching to ion drives when in space, two halves of a whole propulsion system. When the Century Egg had been 'half-fueled', that meant the ion drives had been topped off while the turboramscrams were running on fumigations. As if on cue, the fanjets began coughing like an asphyxiated asthmatic. "Crap! Brewbacca, we have to lose some weight!"

Brewbacca howled in protest.

"Go on a diet?! This isn't time for jokes!" Nah spat back. Then, an idea struck him. Half the Bragtech arms shipment was still in the ship. "Go to the cargo bay, we're dumping the goods!"

Brewbacca growled and howled something about how it was dangerous for him to open the bay while they were on the verge of space.

"Shut up and get some exercise you fat furry fuck!" Nah shouted and laughed. He thought it was pretty clever because Brewbacca was fat and furry, because he was wearing a fursuit which was furry, and because he was a goddamn furvert, otherwise known as furry. Hahaha!

Brewbacca whined and stormed off in a huff. Then Nah could hear the whine of bomb bays opening, and the whistling sound of the cargo being dumped like gravity bombs. Because some of the Bragtech weapons were gravity bombs!

"We're gaining altitude!" Nah cried. After all the shit that had just happened, all he wanted to do was get the fuck out of Pendleton. "We're breaking into orbit! Yes! Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes! YES!"

Nah Oslo laughed. Eat your heart out Tamrin! Eat your heart out, Balthier! Nah opened the money bag and began counting the bills. Oh man. Oh man. He was rich. He was filthy fucking rich. He did it! He did it! God, they all tried to fuck him over. That Java, those fucking punishers and white guys. But now, hah. He showed them all! They were all the losers! Not him! Not Nah Oslo! No! Never again. NEVER AGAIN!

Heheheheheheheheheh. As the Century Egg soared into space, Nah began to wonder what he'd buy with his proceeds. Then he decided. He would buy a pair of novelty truck balls, the realistic ones with skin-like nutsacks and veins sticking out of them, and even teensy little bits of pubes on 'em, and stick them on the backside of his spaceship. Yes, that would be the first thing he would do once he got out of Pendleton.

Yes.

I am the greatest.



Meanwhile, down below on Pendleton, the insurgent salvers and the freed slave vigilantes both made away with portions of the Bragtech arms shipment, fighting amongst themselves in a disgusting squabble over who gets the largest piece of the pie.

***

"The package has been disseminated. The subject has left the area."

"Prioritize the surveillance of all suspected elements. Track the packages, maintain adequate distance and remain concealed."

"Take no direct action until authorized. Observe and surveil only."

"Acknowledged."

[Agent Sorchus]

June / July Sector H6 (I refuse to keep a time table for all the pirate actions, needless to say this is before the Prussians are ready to mobilize.)

Agent Chaos coughed in the dusty storeroom. Damned provincials, not keeping things clean in their enclosed habitat. Oh well at least he wouldn't have to be here long.

One of the prior contacts hadn't been very easy to get a hold of almost making the Captain of the little Tramp vessel he was undercover on think he had deserted. At least he had some more data out of it, the Infiltration and Observation man had been busy keeping track of when the pirates would check in for supplies, mostly rum and other intoxicants. The data looked like 2 different groups either patrolled or were based in the near space.

This time the Observer had been quick to acclaim a negative. Not improbable really there were enough dirt balls with insignificant colonies on them in the surrounding sectors that the pirates couldn't have been expected to be at all of them.

Hell he would have already left but for his captain insisting that they should take on spare parts here. That was a happy enough thought, the ship did need some more tender loving care, but picking up parts from a junk dealer in the middle of nowhere wasn't as happy a thought. That was until he saw the collection of equipment that he was calling junk.

Enough of it was modern universal plug equipment that he searched his memories whether the observer had looked into this being a pirate font. He almost regretted doubting the man though, for it was almost certainly not one.

He was now following a hunch, looking through some of the sensor pieces in the collection.

He grunted as he picked up one of the promising examples, if he was right it was surplus from the UN's fleet. The receiver was a little dented and it could use a new coat of paint, but it was still plugged in and from the look of the dust it had been lying there for a while. The log was just as he had hoped, though the sound of laughter came at that thought, as though to say of course it was. This evidence was going to be priority, he might even have to commandeer the ship. He smiled, his best imitation of Bragulan Laughter. Of course the captain might not be happy, but Chaos would just like to see him try to do anything about it.

Three days later.
Mareiopolis Nova Atlantis, Nova Atlantis Sector

The EUC diplomatic adviser drove down the boulevard in a bland grav car, his destination just ahead. As he pulled up to the NAC Naval command Center Marcelino's offhand went to the package he had been instructed to bring from the Embassy.

The First layer of security was the most stringent, detailed identity checks including a pass with a PKE meter. The inner layers included more nasty things if it was called for, but rarely was it needed. Just pass through a check for nanite spies and he was on his way. It would have been much harder if he wasn't expected.

He presented himself before the General Staff, finally opening the case he had brought, revealing a single use encryption machine. It was swiftly combined with the comm gear in the room.

The holo of both an Eoghan Rear Admiral and Secretary of the Transhuminist Office of the Navy appeared before them. Rear Admiral Ognjan was taking part in the conversation from his desk aboard his carrier/flagship Onen. The Rear Admiral started at off directing his pening remark at his human collaborators, "Gentlemen we are here to finalize the plan for operation Firestorm. Recon and Intelligence from all our nations points to the necessity of Major actions against the pirates in H6."

"Indeed, they have been bold enough to attempt the direct capture of Naval vessels." The Atlantean Admiral Josef Patton interjected. "Right now the Naval recon group has identified various rally points for the pirates. Intelligence believes that these locals are where they divide the loot from various raids, temporary classified as Bazaars. We've heard that you have additional intelligence to share though?"

"Yes though..."

Secretary Kapila raised a hand. "A moment please. We have been observing the Centrality and Umerian operation in detail, as I am sure you have too, and we are concerned about the timetable and other things we have gleaned in this exercise. Specifically the Pirates choosing hard static targets to fight over, the generally high equipment status of the pirates and the tepid pace of all of it. Does this change our plans?"

Patton waved it off, "My dear the Centrality Navy is playing a fool for the sake of finding and maintaining allies. They accepted help from so far away from the actual conflict zone and delayed action too much in allowing their allies to arrive. Frankly they would have been better off mobilizing a slightly greater part of their navy and coordinating with the Idurans to eliminate the pirates."

"Right, a lot like the problems that the Anglians have with the Multi-national fleet at Pendleton. Do you honestly think a Monolith would have or could have raced in if it was just the Anglicans bringing little more than was necessary in as short a time as possible?"

"That isn't so very reassuring since we still have to face off against the fixed defenses of the Pirates. If you'll review the notes that we sent you'll see that we are sending a task force centered around a Battle-cruiser." Kapila hefted a folder with the same clearance markings that the notes all shared. "What the notes do not say is that we are still worried that the enemy will have too much defenses, so I have moved a force into near reserve that would double our commitment."

"Possibly unnecessary but welcome. Eoghan intelligence assets have been active in identifying the opposition. We have less than a pawful of likely targets, one confirmed and a double pawful of unlikely targets. The confirmed Target has engaged recon assets which are still evading pursuit. We believe it to be a Depot for their ships, but won't be certain till either the Recon assets return or we send something else there."

"So that will be Target One?"

"No, they will be expecting a second expedition and our best simulation has the minefields delaying us too much allowing them a good look at our force. Firestorm is going to play to our advantages in intelligence by denying them time to prepare for a stand up battle on a battlefield of their choice. Also one of the likely targets we only barely and recently discovered is a Communications hub."

"The opening phase of Firestorm is for the Atlantean force to stike at the next "bazaar" in open space alongside elements of the Humanist Navy. At this point Eoghan Marine forces are going to attempt to overrun the Comms Hub."

"So phase one is all about disorganizing and scattering the pirates." Secretary Kapila obviously was trying her best to stay on top of the plan despite no experience in operations planning. Her staff were doing a good job to stay unobtrusive while keeping her up to speed, but in real time there was only so much they could do.

"Essentially, and the second phase is meant to confound the problem. All national task forces are to rundown or follow as many of the scattered pirates from phase one as possible. If they are all rundown that is fine we will then proceed to hit all the remaining likely targets, if not the task forces are to besiege the outposts they flee to at the minimum. If possible go for the neck and kill."

"Phase three is the finale, and we see this as lasting the longest. We will expend as much of our reserve as possible to break the sieges that remain, one by one. If and when no sieges remain the national task forces shall designate independent squadrons to seek and destroy the scattering survivors and investigate the unlikely sites, while the remaining ships of each task force rearm and fortify the captured targets."

"Is this not too bold of a plan?"

"Yes and no. The Eoghan federal navy would not have promoted such a reckless plot except that on review of the more cautious approach of the Centrality we realized that this is going to work better against the opposition. At least so long as we retain an advantage in the Intelligence war."

"Is the date for the operation set?"

"If we are agreed here and now? Then yes in five days, we hope to have the major aspects of the operation done in three to a week after start. After all much of our Intelligence is time sensitive."

[Alyrium Denryle]

Space over Faust, Faust System
Dovan Sector, The Centrality
13 August 3400
TSS Palmipes

"Commander, we have permission from Command to proceed"

"Which telepath is aboard the Opacum?"

"Several, but it is rumored that the Amplitur had psionic abilities in excess of our normal range."

Commander Bastilobatrachus whistled softly to himself for a moment

"How many of those telepaths are trained hermetics?"

"Ah, I see where you are going. let me check their files" the Communications officer replied then after a few seconds of looking at a read out, continued "All of them"

...

Magus sat--well, crouched--in the the Sensorium aboard the TSS Opacum, an Amybstoma class Cruiser. He was the head of the Centerpond Academy, one of the most powerful mental entities within the TSR, rated 12 on all scales but body augmentation, and was to take part in the Tournament--if it was not canceled. Right now, he was assisting Naval Intelligence coordinating the minds of customs fighters with whom he was Gestalted. He cast his mind out and felt their minds link to his. If they were not telepaths he could not have done this, but they were. Then he felt their minds shift. Something was happening... Shepistan, The Centrality. Visions of possible futures flashed before his eyes, it took him everything he had to maintain concentration and not send them to those he was Gestalted to. He lost track of time.

An undetermined amount of time later, the intercomm beeped.

"Yes." He paused, his speech slow. He could not afford to break concentration. "You need me to do a... tactful demonstration. I will need volunteers from the fleet. No one above a T2, anyone else will have blocks that will make this more difficult. It will not sufficiently replicate the effect a psionicist can have to alter perception"

...

Planetside

"Ambassador Thorne, I am glad you could meet us on such short notice." Commander Limnodynastes was in his dress Still Suit, which was a combined formal dress uniform--as protocol would dictate--and a still suit to help him keep down water loss. He was flanked with a small honor guard, with Magus on his right hand side. A cadre of volunteer Ranoideans behind them.

"What brings you down to the Planet, shouldn't you be helping with Customs? I am a very busy person" said Ambassador Thorne, who looked somewhat flustered.

"It will be worth your time. As you know, we are largely neutral in your affairs with Shepistan. However we also lie along the fastest hyperspace route between both of your people, and would inevitably be drawn into any conflict. We do not want out territory being used as a hyperspace lane during a war with Shepistan, and thus are attempting to give your government reason to talk, rather than fight. This is Magus. He is rated a T12, the highest on our scale. He is going to demonstrate how a psionicist may have been able to alter perceptions on both sides, or even outright control the actions of one or more people to do the things that lead to the Shepistani attack on your Embassy."

Magus stepped forward. His voice slow, and measured.

"A Twelve rated telepath can do a number of things to create these conditions ambassador. The Amplitur are reported to be stronger, but it need not have been one of them at your embassy. A terrorist or political dissident of sufficient strength could have done this if they could get inside your embassy." He closed his eyes, and the twelve Ranoidean volunteers began acting strangely. They talked on imaginary commlinks.

"COMMANDER! THE PALMIPES REPORTS THAT THE SHEPISTANI'S HAVE JUMPED INTO ORBIT WITH A BATTLE FLEET!" one of them shouted. Others confirmed, or requested confirmation from their respective ships. Ambassador Thorne panicked and began shouting orders at his staff to get to shelters before Magus acted again.

"Belay that, the reports were psionic implants." He projected into the minds of the staff. They stopped as if they heard it from Thorne. What he saw was them stopping in their tracks without a word and carry on their regular duties.

"Telepathic projection is relatively easy, especially if you can dredge up the fears of a target. Even if you cannot see them, you can implant the suggestion and their own minds will take care of the rest. It is very passive, and requires no major intrusion into their minds. A T8 could do this within your embassy if they could get past the Blitzschlag fields surrounding it. I could even excise the memory of my being there completely. Repressing them however is just as effective, and much easier."

"Dont you think we know this, 'Magus'? The ambassador asked.

"You should. You use telepaths and telekinetics heavily in a government capacity. The thought should have crossed your minds, and while I may be a mind-reader, I wont read yours. Consider the possibility that your prejudices are incorrect, and that the Sheppos may be telling their twisted version of the truth. Remember, if I wanted to, I could send your embassy into chaos. I could make you all think you were being attacked by little pink 20th century pop-star monsters if I wanted to. If outside of a null field or Blitzschlag field, there is nothing you could do if you did not have a telepath capable of warning someone, or jamming the intruder. I could even erase the memory that I was ever there." To emphasize the point, he broadcast an image to his volunteers... they shuddered



"Now go forth, and make rational choices."

[Tanasinn]

Unknown Location
Wild Space
FNS Cataphract
June/July 3400

With the bridge in her XO's capable hands, Commodore Brookes was free to examine the reports she'd received in relative privacy, chewing on an unlit cigar as she considered their significance. To be sure, the force she was bringing to bear in this battle was well-equipped for a pirate hunt, to say nothing of her reserves. The Office of the Navy, in its wisdom, had estimated from intuition and data - correctly, as it turned out - that the wild space pirates whose beehive the Centrality fascists had managed to kick would be better-kitted than the sort that operated in-state.

For this reason, Brookes viewed the agreed-upon action plan with some caution. It was simple, and on its face, logical, which always helped. Her forces, alongside the Atlanteans, would strike a pirate "bazaar" while the Eoghans neutralized a pirate communications hub. The effect would be to leave the pirates at least briefly confused and disorganized, at which point the allied naval forces would strike at remaining pirate vessels and hardpoints to take full advantage of their window of opportunity. Certainly, the plan could work, but Brookes could see some of the weaknesses. Intelligence superiority was necessary, lest the pirates set a trap or appropriately prepare to withdraw. Brookes doubted if the pirate rabble could manage to assemble a fleet on-par with what the navies would be deploying, but a roused enemy was a deadly enemy, and she didn't want to be hunting remnants of these filth across every forsaken rock with a cranny big enough for a pirate to squeeze into. The loss of that freighter - the New Frontier - added additional pressure for a clean operation back home, as well. There was also the relative inexperience of her forces to consider - the Cataphract itself had seen its fair share of action, but many vessels in both task forces had been rotated in only recently, with scarely enough time for integration exercises. Brookes had filed a complaint, which of course had gone nowhere.

The commodore couldn't really blame Kapila's apparent mute agreement with this plan; like too many in the Office, the secretary was untried. Theoretically competent and quick to learn, she was inexperienced in operational planning and had been assigned to this show-of-force largely for the purpose of "blooding" her. What had been significant to Brookes - and why she hadn't been more concerned - was the woman's humility; here was a desk commander she could potentially work with, one who would leave tactical choices where they belonged, in the hands of the field commander.

Which brought Brookes back to the operational plan. Jumping in aggressively against the bazaar would allow for the quickest destruction of the designated target and any vessels on-site; they wouldn't get word off and they would have no time to run. If the pirates were ready, however - due to an intelligence breech or paranoia - such a maneuver could be disasterous. Even pirates could lay minefields (indeed, these ones were known to employ them), and they would be denser closer to the bazaar, where the Humanist vessels could bring all of their firepower to bear even against highly mobile targets. Jumping into a minefield meant potentially massive damage, which in turn could disrupt coordination with her less experienced elements and lead to further losses, as well as enemy escape. Conversely, a jump in from the edge of the operational zone would make it much harder to be "ambushed" in any sense, but would lengthen the time it took to destroy the bazaar and allow a larger window for enemy vessels to flee, warning compatriots and going to ground.

Brookes lit her cigar as she scanned reports on the Commonwealth Star Navy's capabilities. Like her own warships, they relied on guided missiles at long ranges. However, their beam weapons...

Hm, Brookes considered, If these reports are to be believed, they can engage effectively with their beams at longer range than we can with our mass drivers. If we were to jump in first, we could gather and transmit some rough data on battlefield conditions so they can jump in closer without being blind. The longer range on those beams means they can be farther out, too, which means less threat from mines. This could work - Humanist vessels would jump in at long range, smashing relatively immobile structures with heavy mass driver fire and suppressing enemy ships with missile fire. The Nova Atlanteans, arriving moments later, would be able to immediately engage with the full force of their weaponry. Disorientation could be compensated with by rapid acceleration to formation by Humanist vessels, the first of which to arrive would be destroyers and corvettes. It would briefly strip Brookes' crusiers of their light ship screen, but it would be difficult for enemy fast responders to exploit this window before formation had been rejoined.

Of course, the plan wasn't final, but Brookes would need the input of her equivalent in the Atlantean forces. She keyed the bridge for a secure commlink with the Nova Atlantean commander.